Fixing the Baseball Playoffs

I really like baseball, always have. So, a few weeks ago, when I heard a story about how Fox was complaining about how the baseball playoffs kill their ratings, and they'd rather be showing new episodes of House in October, I wanted to be outraged, but I wasn't. I want new episodes of House too. Even tonight, while the Yankees have been trying to clinch a world series birth, I've spent most of the night watching Flash Forward, The Office and 30 Rock, and now, as Nick Swisher slowly makes his way over to a ball hit to right field(he does everything slowly), I'm only half paying attention, because I'm also writing this. In contrast, a few years ago, when the hockey playoffs were still on my TV, I would have skipped the pilot episode of a new show written by and starring me to see a hockey playoff game, and if you read last Friday's blog, you know I didn't even have a hockey team to root for until last Friday. Obviously, there's a problem, but I'm a solutions guy. So, here are my top ten ideas for fixing the baseball playoffs.

A couple of quick notes before we start. First, I'm not suggesting we use all ten of these ideas at the same time, I'm not insane. Try two or three, if they don't work, try a couple of the others, mix and match, find the right balance. Second, baseball can use these ideas during the regular season if they want, that's up the commissioner, I'm just the idea man.

Number 10: Umpire Idol

Just to be clear, I hate American Idol. If I could close my eyes and wish it away, you'd better believe it would already be gone by now. But there's no ego here, I'm writing for the greater good.

Baseball umpires drive my crazy. They're the only officials in the four major sports that get to do most of their job while standing still, and they still can't get it right. So here's the idea. During the regular season, Fox runs an American Idol style show where ordinary Americans can audition to be baseball umpires. I like crazy former players and managers with reputations for terrorizing umpires as judges. Bobby Cox is retiring next year, he's in. At the end of September, they pick 16 winners to make up four crews of four people each who get to work the playoffs.

Also, people who are paying close attention to the playoffs might say, "hey, playoff crews have six umps!" Not under my system they don't. I always thought this was a stupid idea, and if you read all the way to the end of this, I think you'll see I'm an expert on stupid ideas.

Number 9: Hot Dog Cannons

They probably already have these somewhere, it sounds like the kind of thing they'd do, say, at a minor league hockey game in Milwaukee. So baseball really just has to get its hands on the technology.

The idea is simple. You've seen the t-shirt cannons they use to give away prizes at sporting events, I saw them at Islanders games when I lived on Long Island. Just keep the cannons, and put hot dogs in them. The big downside here is that this is only for the live crowd, so it doesn't really help ratings, but I think the live crowd deserves something. As I understand it, playoff tickets now cost somewhere in the eleventy billion dollars range, free hot dogs is the least we can do.

PS...there could be mustard hoses involved in this idea, I haven't decided yet.

Number 8: Lights Out

The crowd at the game gets night vision goggles. The TV cameras have night vision lenses. But all the players see are glow in the dark balls, glow in the dark gloves and glow in the dark bases. We only do this in one game per series, but nobody knows which one until the game starts and the lights go out. Would you watch that game? Hell yeah you would! Case closed.

Number 7: Booby Traps

Two hours before each game, an independent grounds crew, not affiliated with either team, digs a big hole somewhere in the outfield, which they then cover with a thin sheet of grass, like a bear trap. Obviously, the hole would be filled with pillows or something so no one gets hurt.

The big question here is, do we tell the TV audience where the hole is, so they can watch and get excited whenever someone runs near it? Or, do we keep it a secret so the home audience is just as surprised as everyone else? Tough call.

Number 6: Four Words
No more Tim McCarver. Seriously. Please.
While we're here Fox, no more pre-game show. Fox's playoff baseball pre-game is officially the worst pre-game in all of sports, nobody should be subjected to it.

Number 5: Adjustable Walls
Picture this. Bottom of the ninth, two outs, man on first, home team down by one. The batter hits a long fly ball to deep right field, it's going..going..g...oh!..wait!..a 75 foot wall just shot out from inside the usual 8 foot right field fence. It's a long single for the shocked batter and the visiting team gets one more chance to put the game away.

Here's how it works. Each manager has a set of buttons in the dugout. One for each segment of the outfield fence. Once a game, he gets to press one of the buttons and 75 feet of extra wall shoots up from inside the original wall, presumably stopping a home run. It would be like challenges in football. The manager would have to be smart about when to use it. Too early and you don't have it late, wait too long and maybe you never get to use it. I also like this idea because it would give the managers something to do. Baseball manager may be the easiest job in sports. You fill out the line-up card and then you watch baseball for a few hours. Sure, you have to take the pitchers out, but you've got a pitching coach to tell you when to do that, you really just have to take the walk.

Number 4: Dugout Moats
I think this one might just be for me. I just find the idea of them having to lower the drawbridge whenever players or coaches have to leave or come back to the dugout hilarious. This has advertising potential though. You could fill the moat with Tostitos salsa or Budweiser.

Number 3: Audience Participation
You could take this one in a lot of different directions. Fan voting on pinch hitters, or when to bunt, but here's my favorite. I'm a Yankees fan. I should have a button I can press whenever it looks like Joe Girardi is about to put Damaso Marte into the game. If enough of us press that button, Joe gets a noticeable, but non-life threatening, shock. Some details to work out here. We'd have to make sure only Yankees fans can shock Joe, and the same goes for all the other teams. Also, we'd need the guy actually in charge of the juice to know enough about baseball to know when the shocks make sense and when people are just pushing the button for fun.

Number 2: Public Stonings
Not actual stonings. When I was a kid, we used to play this game. I don't really remember anything about it except, at some point, someone stood against a fence and the rest of us threw tennis balls at him. So, if a team gets knocked out of the playoffs at home, 10 fans are randomly chosen from the crowd. These 10 fans have to A) pick the guy on the home team most responsible for the loss (not just the last game, but the whole playoff elimination) and B) have him stand against the outfield wall while they throw baseballs at him.

Same rules as when I was a kid. No head shots and the guy can use his hands to protect his groin.

Number 1: Rally Monkeys
Not the stupid dolls they sell in Los Angeles of Anaheim. Actual monkeys. Each stadium would have a troop of about 75 or so monkeys that they keep somewhere in the stadium. Once a game, the home team manager (by the way, this would be a home field advantage thing, only the home team controls the monkeys) can have the monkeys released for 10 minutes while the game has to continue.

So much to like with this one. When, strategically, would be the best time to release the monkeys? While your team is hitting or pitching? Would the monkeys steal hats and gloves from players? Probably. Maybe if a player loses his hat to a monkey, he has to sit out the rest of the game. I know, we've got some tough logistics on this one. We'd have to find a way to keep the monkeys out of the crowd. And kids are watching, so the monkeys would have to be wearing pants. And there would probably need to be some kind of monkey insurance for players and umpires. Still, I love this idea.

So there you go. I think we can save the baseball playoffs from eventually being relegated to TBS full time. These ideas would hurt the integrity of the game, you say? Maybe, but are any of them worse than interleague play? I say no.