Many pundits have forecasted that the long dispute between Major League Baseball and the MLB Players Association and the resulting 60 game season, along with other changes, would be the death nail for America’s Pastime. Not Colin Cowherd, however, as he holds the polar opposite opinion which he expressed on Monday’s edition of The Herd.
“I have had the privilege of living in all four corners of the country,” Cowherd said. “I lived in the Northeast for 11 years where baseball and tradition rule.”
Cowherd points out that baseball is steeped in tradition, and says that it is that tradition, not the shortened season and the other changes that come with it, that has been killing baseball.
“Tradition can be wonderful,” Cowherd said. “It can give you great memories of doing the same thing year after year with your family. But tradition can be really bad, too. People watch things, eat things, and do things that are really boring just because they always have. Baseball has a lot of traditions, but good God, it needs changes and it is going to get some of them now.”
According to Cowherd, the biggest change is the 60 game season instead of the traditional 162 game schedule.
“Hallelujah,” Cowherd exclaimed. “A DH in both leagues, Hallelujah. In extra innings they will put a runner on second base to start the inning so we don’t have 17 inning games, Hallelujah.”
Cowherd strengthens his argument by comparing baseball’s traditions to other sports.
“Baseball games that go into extra innings don’t end sometimes before 12:45 or 1 o’clock in the morning and the majority of the games are played Monday through Thursday. If I told you I watched the AFC championship game between the Ravens and the Chiefs that didn’t end until 2 a.m., you would be like ’what idiot scheduled a game to start so late?’, but that’s been baseball for the last 20 years. Too much of baseball is about tradition and habit and doing it this way because we have always done it that way. I can’t wait for baseball and these changes.”
With the 60 game season, Cowherd also argues that each game takes on a sense of urgency.
“It (the season) is a sprint now,” he said. “The Yankees and Dodgers are favored but if they go on a four game losing streak or fall four games under .500, they might not make the playoffs. If you tried to sell baseball as it is now to a bunch of investors and pitched them, ‘Oh it’s 162 games and some of them last five hours and the stars spend most of the time sitting in the dugout’, nobody would buy it. Those same investors if you brought up MLS soccer: where the games are really fast, there are no stoppages, the ball is always in play, the stars are always in the game, you have two 45 minute halves and games are over in two hours so you could play a game every day, then MLS would be an easy sell to investors but not baseball.”
