Is baseball going the way of hockey?

I'm going to take another day off politics here and tell you about an experience and observation I had recently. I was looking to make my plans for the next few weeks as far as television watching goes - in other words, it's time for the baseball playoffs. So I'm looking at where the games will be telecast and I see TBS. TBS? What happened to Fox?

Well, Fox picks things up starting with the League Championship Series. But the first round will be played exclusively on cable and satellite. While I do have cable (as most in the country do) and can watch the games it's just another example of how baseball continues to squander its rightful position as America's preeminent sport. A transition has happened in my lifetime, one that has seen baseball decline from America's pastime to one of many summer sports. Meanwhile the NFL has become the top draw, with NASCAR passing baseball for second on the popularity scale.

In my eyes it compares to what's happened to hockey. Once it was considered a "big four" sport with baseball, football, and basketball (NASCAR was pretty much a Deep South draw back in my youth.) But it couldn't keep a TV audience and went through a series of network broadcast contracts relatively quickly (NBC had it for a short while in the 1970's, then ABC and ESPN more recently gave NHL hockey a shot.) Now it's on the Versus cable network and truly not many people care outside of the Northeast, Great Lakes, and NHL cities in other areas. If you look at Washington for example, the city loves its Redskins, followed by the Wizards, the Nationals, and then you have the Capitals - who might even trail the DC United soccer team.

It's not like either sport isn't attempting to expand its reach either. Similar to the National Hockey League getting an influx of European and Russian players over the last decade, baseball is trying to expand on a global scale as it cashes in on the growing number of Latino players in the sport along with an increasing Asian presence. It's trying to be soccer in reverse - a sport that starts in America and conquers the world as opposed to the rest of the world following it and America being the last major world market to conquer.

To be honest, I'm not a big hockey fan although I do enjoy it when the Red Wings do well. But I see how that sport has been marginalized by not being able to compete with other winter into spring sports out there like college basketball, arena football and NASCAR for fan interest. Baseball faces a similar problem as its playoffs compete with the NFL and NASCAR on Sundays and college football many other days of the week.

And to make matters worse on my part, when it comes to baseball as a sport I am a traditionalist - well, tradition circa the 1970's when I grew up. (Fortunately we've bagged most of the garish uniforms of the era.) I can't stand interleague play, don't care much for the wild card even though that's how my Tigers got in the World Series last season and really would love to see the DH banished. To me, a well-pitched 2-1 game with a lot of managerial moves and strategy is far superior to an 11-10 slugfest with 8 or 9 home runs. Chicks may dig the long ball, but real fans like the double switch.

I have a few suggestions on how baseball can stop this trend of marginalizing itself. One is to go back to the traditional strike zone and make batters earn their way on base through hitting. That can start in 2008. More importantly, quit scheduling games to start at 8:30 or 9:00 at night and get back to 7:30 primetime games. Let the Fox stations bitch, it's only 2 weeks a year. You'll notice the primetime NFL games that used to start at 9:00 have gone back to 8:15 or 8:30. The idea in both of my suggestions is to speed up the action somewhat and allow games to be finished before the 11:00 news. Ideally a playoff game would get in at about 3 hours, even with commercial breaks.

It's ironic that as baseball attendance in the parks increases, the ratings they draw on TV decrease or stay flat. That to me indicates a drop in the number of casual fans, and baseball needs to market itself a little more to them by making the action more appealing. Otherwise we'll be watching Game 7 of the World Series on some obscure cable network on tape delay someday.

Now if you'll excuse me, I have a ballgame to watch.