If you’ve ever brought someone to their first baseball game as an adult, you might be able to relate to the experience of seeing a game for the first time with fresh eyes. Maybe you were once an adult watching a live game for the first time.
When you know what to look for, a baseball game looks very different. The more you watch, the more you learn. This is true of every sport, though baseball offers the broadest spectrum of entry points. You never know what will turn a novice into a fan for life, but we all started somewhere.
I’ve been thinking about that a lot this week, in light of MLB’s decision to permanently institute the rule mandating an automatic runner on second base in extra-innings games. It’s the perfect rule to explain the difference between a novice, the person who might or might not watch one game all season, and someone who is invested from the time pitchers and catchers report until the final out of the World Series.
Converting a novice into a hardcore fan is hardly a science, but it’s the sort of mandate that leads to an off-season like this one, when the sport we knew a year ago will be very different from the one about to begin play in Arizona and Florida. Consider all the changes:
- A pitch timer: the batter and pitcher will be restricted to 15 seconds between pitches when no runners are on base, and 20 seconds with runners on.
- Limited pickoff attempts/timeouts: pitchers can step off the mound only twice in a single plate appearance, while hitters can only call timeout once.
- Bigger bases: First base, second base and third base all grew by three inches, to an 18-inch square, slightly reducing the distance between every base.
- Defensive restrictions: Two infielders must be positioned on either side of second base, with two feet on the infield dirt, whenever the pitcher is on the rubber.
Ostensibly, MLB isn’t worried the new rules will persuade hardcore fans to watch something else in their spare time. If anything, the bullet-point…
Read the full article here
