If baseball wants to increase interest in the game, why kill the minor leagues?

I’ve loved baseball all my life and followed it religiously. But the powers that be are making it awfully hard to justify that emotional investment, from watering down and cheapening the game with nonsensical changes to the rules to pulling the threads of minor league baseball from the fabric of our country.

They have a problem with a shrinking audience, so they answer is to take away opportunities for people to see their product? Isn’t it strange that new major league parks keep getting smaller. The seats they’re eliminating aren’t the ones corporations buy as write offs. They’re the ones the people who struggle to pay the price of admission to bring their family of four to the ballpark sit in. So now they stay home and the next generation of baseball fans is cut off entirely from the game.

It’s the same thing with the low minors teams. Maybe fans in Peoria can’t afford to take time off to travel to see the big leaguers play in St. Louis or Chicago. But they can be a part of the major leagues by taking in the game of an affiliate. It doesn’t matter if any of the players are hot prospects or even if none of them make it to the major league from that particular crop of players. The minors are connecting to the big leagues in many more ways than one.

And it’s more than just a link to the big time. The minor league teams in the Carolina League and the Midwest League have meant every bit as much to their towns as the Cardinals do to St. Louis. They’re a part of the local culture and they’re what keeps ages of people interested in baseball. Instead of growing future fans, MLB is making enemies by taking away town’s teams and shuttering their ballparks. It just doesn’t make sense to me to give people less baseball if Commissioner Rob Manfred is so concerned about trying to reverse a trend of waning attendance.

They can have their analytics and their spreadsheets. But the heart of baseball is the beauty of the game. They’re not throwing out the baby with the bath water. They’re throwing out the baby and keeping the bath water.

In the spring, we’re going to see a major change in the way the game is played. Maybe the biggest change since owners “experimented” with the idea of a designated hitter nearly 50 years ago — and then were never able to get rid of it. This time, it’s a silly rule that requires relief pitchers must throw to at least three hitters before they can be swapped out for a new hurler. In a world where we’re so worried about what digital reports say about player performance and where the defense should be positioned, now we’re going to take away the power of managers to play the match-ups? What would Whitey Herzog and Tony La Russa do?

It’s all about saving a few minutes when pitchers are changed. Why? The brilliance about baseball is that it polices itself. If a manager wants to change pitchers every other batter, I say let him. It’s not going to be long before he burns through his bullpen. There is no need to artificially change the game. Its consistency is what makes it so intriguing. It’s an institution because it has staying power. It’s not supposed to be about the latest fad. What it really is boils down to pencil pushers deciding what fans want, ignoring what they say they want in the process.

Uniform changes hurt MLB fans, too

Take, for example, the constant changing of the uniforms. A few years back, the Cardinals polled their fans on whether the team should continue to wear the navy caps it traditionally wore on the club wore on the road or go back to the red hats the team wore away from home in the 1970s and 80s. Fans voted for blue. The Cardinals pulled down the poll, claiming there was a problem with the results and relaunched it. Blue won again. What did the team do? It switched to red. Last season it unveiled hideous sky blue road jerseys that looked like cheap, tasteless pajamas. If my social media feed is any indication, about 25 percent of fans thought they were a good idea while 75 percent thought they were an abomination. What did the team do? It announced they’ll be back in 2020.

Tinkering with things just for the sake of tinkering things does nothing but give the impression that you have no clue what you’re doing. Can we stop messing with the rules, moving the deck chairs around on the Titanic and get back to trying to play sound fundamental baseball in 2020?

This story was originally published November 18, 2019 at 8:51 AM.

Scott Wuerz

Belleville News-Democrat

Scott Wuerz has written “Cheap Seats,” a St. Louis Cardinals fan blog for the Belleville News-Democrat, since 2007. He is a former BND reporter who covered breaking news and education.