I honestly believe that if the next baseball commissioner can have a conversation with the players and managers about stopping all this unwritten rules nonsense and encouraging players to hype up the crowd during downtime it would lead to a more entertaining game. Imagine an outfielder waving his arms and telling the fans to get up when his pitcher has 2 strikes on a hitter or imagine a guy who it a double stands on second and starts motioning to the crowd to get up to drive him in. Those kinds of actions alone would make the game much more exciting. Crowd atmosphere even more so than pace is the biggest reason why a lot of people find baseball boring. Take football for example, a lot of people will say oh football is much more exciting and action packed then baseball. In reality studies have shown that there's really only 11 minutes of action in an entire 3 1/2 hours of football.
Anyone whose been to an actual game knows that there is plenty of downtime in football. I mean every play follows a situation where the team huddles, they get walk into their formation, some time passes the play happens, a player is tackled the, referee comes by spots the ball the team gets back up to huddle and the same process repeats. Thats not even counting the plays that are constantly interrupted by flags and the fact that the refs have to make an announcement of each penalty that just happened which takes away from the game as well. People don't notice as much because the atmosphere of the game is always electric because of the fact that the games are so meaningful and the players hype up the crowd on every play.
As a dominican watching carribbean series baseball the atmosphere and the showmanship make the games that much more electric and exciting because baseball like football is a sport where a lot of the fun is based on the anticipation of action. There is a stark cultural difference in the way white people (especially older ones) and black people perceive these kinds of celebrations. White people see it as arrogance and selfishness and a lack of professionalism and respect. People of African origins (i say african origins cuz i'm including latinos in this) we value extroverted celebrations. You can look at religion as one example of this. You got christian denominations like catholicism and other puritannical forms of christianity practice their spirituality by valuing humility. African and Native Americans before they were colonized largely practiced their brands of spirituality through dance and celebration. Once they were conquered and had christianity forced on them they took these elements of dance and celebration and implemented them towards their own brands of Christianity and today you see a stark difference in the way two races of people choose to worship one God.
So in turn, baseball's gotta be more open to allowing a more festive atmosphere to their games even if they do play 162 games.Baseball allows less teams into its post-season than do the other sports so there is a higher premium to making the post-season so regular season games are much more critical than they are in the NBA and NHL despite having twice as many games. The teams should try to hype up their fanbases more during games as it would make the games on television that much better and remove some of the negative "old boys club" perception that a lot of young black kids have of baseball today.
