We live in an era where more and more people are becoming less and less patient. So many people these days, especially the younger crowd, want instant gratification and they expect to be entertained upon request.
When it comes to Major League Baseball, the league is actively looking for ways to improve the game and to make it more entertaining for the fans, while attracting more fans at the same time.
Well, maybe MLB should contact former Detroit Tigers skipper, Jim Leyland, who believes he has a simple change that would help fix the game.
Leyland recently joined the Stoney & Jansen Show on 97.1 The Ticket and he revealed his fix for the game.
“I think the biggest problem is that the hitters don’t get in the box,” Leyland said Friday on the Stoney & Jansen Show. “When a guy hits a pop up to the shortstop, the next hitter should be walking up to home plate. What is he standing over there for with his donut on the bat, swinging the bat, waiting for his walk-up music? That’s ridiculous. It’s not the pitchers that slow the game down, it’s the hitters. We need to get the hitters in the box. That would take care of a lot of issues if they would just do that.”
“He shouldn’t be standing over there in the on-deck circle fooling around with his batting gloves, fooling around with the donut on his bat, can’t get it off the bat, then he stands there and waits for his walk-up music. If (MLB) would just (change) that, that’s one simple thing, you’d be surprised how much faster the pace of the game would go,” Leyland said.
As far as the shift goes in baseball, Leyland is not a fan of it and he thinks it is bad for the game of baseball.
“This is just an opinion, I don’t know if I’m right or wrong,” he said. “We always ask, do you like the shift? Some people say yes, some people say no. Then we say, does the shift work? Yes, in a lot of cases the shift works. But those aren’t the two questions we should be asking. We should be asking, is the shift good for baseball? And in my opinion it’s not. Other opinions might say, yes, they think it is, but in my opinion it’s not good for the game.
“And I think that’s the question that needs to be answered by owners, players, general managers. Everybody involved in the game should sit down and talk about this and decide whether it’s good for the game and then go forward.”
Quotes via 97.1 The Ticket – LINK
