[teebob21]

[soapbox]

Here's how I see it. All big-time sports are monetized now. NCAA football, NCAA softball, MLB, NFL, you name it. Where does the money come from? TV broadcasts. Now, at face value, that's not a bad thing. Broadcasting sports brings the games to a vastly wider audience, encouraging participation and longevity of the games in a world of people without enough sense or patience to not text while driving. Basketball doesn't suffer from this as much, as it is a fundamentally clock-driven, quicker game than the one we work.

Unfortunately, now there is a player in the room who controls the source of the Almighty Dollars. One who may or may not have the best interests of the spirit and purity of the game in mind, again, because of the Almighty Dollar.

D1 softball faced this recently. For reasons I won't go into, as I am on the outer circles of that level of play, games were getting LONG. As in 3+ hours of actual play long. The networks were having trouble slotting full games into their allotted window. I know of at least 3 networks that had concerns: ESPN, Pac-12, and SEC. As a result, NCAA has introduced rules changes recently to accelerate pace of play, such as the Media Format (limiting team conferences and time between innings, relaxed versions of the rules which have existed in ASA/USA softball for AGES) and the emphasis on time between pitches. MLB, while applying the rules first to the Arizona Fall League and MiLB, is battling the same constraint: how to make "the beautiful game without a clock" compatible with the source of Almighty Dollars, a TV schedule that runs on a clock. I have no strong opinion either way about the current MLB Commissioner, but I like that he's willing to employ measured, conservative steps to bend the game gently into a format compatible with the dollars that keep it running.

I'm not a strict purist; I'm OK with rules changes to increase pace of play. I'm not OK with rules changes that fundamentally alter the nature of the game in its historical form. In baseball, there is and should never be a rule that prevents a pitcher from attempting a pickoff 47 times in a row. Also, I'm obviously an umpire: I LIKE FAST GAMES. We don't get paid by the hour.

Rules changes that address abuse of existing loopholes in the rulesets are positive and good, such as the limitation on conferences in televised NCAA softball. No other sport than I know of granted EACH TEAM 14 charged timeouts. Can you imagine a football game where each team had 7 offensive and 7 defensive timeouts? Good lord.

Baseball and softball boil down to a few fundamental tenets: See ball, hit ball, run to base safely, field ball, and get outs. No rules changes should mess with that foundation of the game. Time between pitches: sure, make a new rule. Limit conferences; sure, make a new rule. Tiebreaker: Why not? (The teams had nine innings and 27 outs to get a lead. Softball has used TB rules for ages without breaking the game. Even with TB, you still have to see ball, hit ball, and run to score.) And so on...

Just don't change the games we all love at the whim of the Almighty Dollar.

[/soapbox]