Major League Baseball sheds its conservatism and embraces fun

IN AMERICAN SPORTS, March is usually synonymous with the country’s annual college-basketball tournament, “March Madness”. The chaotic knockout competition is famous for its dramatic upsets. But this year, quite uncharacteristically, baseball has stolen headlines and eyeballs with some very welcome chaos of its own.

Major League Baseball (MLB) launched three big rule changes during spring training, turning what is usually a sleepy affair in suburban Florida and Arizona into a sneak preview of how the league plans to modernise. The biggest change is the addition of a pitch clock. Pitchers now have 15 seconds to throw to batters if the bases are empty, and 20 seconds if there are runners on base. Such a seemingly small change is revolutionary for a sport famous for its lackadaisical pace. Prior to this year, it was common for a pitcher to stare at a batter for seconds, as if the contest were a gladiatorial battle of wills. Batters could call multiple time-outs in order to work at their own pace, or to unnerve the pitcher. Pitchers could throw several times to first base to try to pick off the base-runner.

No longer. Pitchers must now work on a tight schedule, and batters can only call one time-out each time they step up to the plate. Rather than resisting the change, or complaining, some pitchers are embracing it. In a game against the Washington Nationals, Max Scherzer, a veteran pitcher with the New York Mets, tried to throw to batters as soon as the clock began to count down, depriving them of any time to prepare themselves. “Now I can actually dictate pace,” he explained after the game. “Now I actually can force action.”

That is just what MLB is hoping for. Last year, spring-training games averaged three hours and one minute, and regular-season games were slightly longer. The Economist’s analysis this year of games up to March 19th suggests that the new rules have shaved off nearly 30 minutes. The other two rule changes—making bases slightly bigger and limiting the shift, or how much infielders can move around prior to a hit—are meant to increase action on the field. Prior to this year, infielders could move back into the grass, or to one side of second base, in anticipation of where the batter might hit the ball. Such moves proliferated in recent years as teams made greater use of analytics in their game strategies. The new rule says all four infielders must start with their feet in the dirt, nearer the batter, with two on each side of second base. These changes, too, seem to be working. Players are stealing more bases and scoring more runs than in previous years.

Not everyone is happy about the new rules. Baseball’s reputation for being America’s “national pastime” feeds the idea that the sport is somehow sacred and untouchable. There is a lot to like about slow sports dedicated to finesse. But baseball’s reverence for its own history fostered a conservatism among executives and older fans. Young people tuned out. Only 11% of Gen Z respondents surveyed by Morning Consult, a pollster, in 2021 said they were avid baseball fans, compared with 18% of all adults.

The new rule changes suggest that MLB is at last interested in adaptation, rather than merely preservation. The existential threat that is young people’s lack of interest in the sport has also forced the league to act in other ways, such as pouring investment into programmes that aim to increase the number of black children who play baseball. According to the University of Central Florida, just 7% of professional players at the start of last season were black, down from 18% in 1991. Several factors may have contributed to this, including pay disparities, the lack of black coaches and executives, and the cost of playing the sport as a child.

MLB should seek further diversity. Black, Hispanic and Japanese communities within America have long embraced baseball—even when the league did not embrace them. The World Baseball Classic, an international tournament which took place in Miami this month, has reminded many Americans just how global their national pastime is. With every captivating game, the tournament hinted that the most thrilling baseball may be found in international contests, rather than America’s own misleadingly named World Series. America is still the place the world’s best baseball players want to end up. One of the tournament’s most electric players, Ohtani Shohei, is a Japanese pitcher and hitter who plays for the Los Angeles Angels. It was Japan that won the final.

Any curmudgeons still worried about change should consider that a sport consisting of shorter, livelier games, with more diverse players, is vastly preferable to one that becomes a relic of the 20th century. Opening Day, on March 30th this year, is just around the corner. The old baseball is dead. Long live baseball. ■