The Volunteer Commissioner

Due to popular demand (okay, one guy asked), I'm compiling all the pieces in the Volunteer Commissioner Series into one helpful post.

In the VCS, I graciously offer my services to fix broken sports.  Or rather, to enhance sports who have not asked for my help.  Some of my suggestions have already been enacted (You're welcome Baseball!) and some I've changed my mind about (the USA-Portugal match in the 2014 World Cup showed me the entertainment value of a draw).

Anyway, enjoy:


Fixing Softball (Women's softball)

The Loser's Out Manifesto (Pick-up basketball)

The Beautiful Game's Flaw (soccer)

The Slowest Game (lacrosse). 

The Winter Classic  (Major League Baseball)

Swimming is Boring (Swimming...which is unfixable.)



I was going to help out Major League Baseball again - incredibly long low-scoring games are not good for the sport - but MLB is already testing out some of the suggestions I was going to make.

And eventually I'll get around to fixing Women's Lacrosse, which has the single stupidest - and easily fixable rule I've ever seen in any sport.  

The Slowest Game?

" Don't Shoot!"

Lacrosse bills itself as “the fastest game on two feet”. But if fans of hurling (“the fastest game on grass”), hockey (“the fastest game on ice”), and jai-alai (“the fastest game on earth”) tuned in to yesterday’s NCAA Men’s Lacrosse Final, they can be forgiven for scoffing at this notion. Because the Fighting Irish of Notre Dame slowed the game down so much it could have been sponsored by Sherwin-Williams and called the “Watching Paint Dry” Lacrosse Final.

* All of these sports base their “fastest” claims on the speed of the ball or puck, but none are faster than a badminton shuttlecock, which can travel as fast as 206 mph.

Okay, I’m being unfair. On many levels it was a very exciting game. Notre Dame and Duke traded goals in the game’s opening minutes and the score was close or tied the entire game. A sudden death OT lasted only five seconds, thanks to a thrilling faceoff-scoop-run-and-score by longstick middie C.J. Costabile. And in a sport that has been dominated by a quintet of teams (Johns Hopkins, Syracuse, Virginia, Princeton, and North Carolina have won every title since 1978) the appearance in the Final of two teams who had never won a title is a great thing for the sport.

But still…lacrosse is the fastest growing sport in America (that claim might actually be true) and many people tuned in to ESPN yesterday to see this exciting sport they have heard so much about. Sadly, they were treated to a game that, as announcer Sean McDonough said, looked like a North Carolina Tar Heel basketball game before the shot clock.

Credit Notre Dame for the right strategy, which we’ll dub the Irish Famine. Coach Kevin Corrigan, realizing he had the least talented team in the tournament, slowed the pace of the game down to a crawl, starving the Duke offense of the ball. On nearly every possession, his offense was content to pass the ball around and bleed the clock. They were given multiple stall warnings and half their shots seemed designed to miss, so that instead of turning the ball over their X attackman can race to the back line and reclaim possession. (for lacrosse newbies, when a shot goes out of bounds, possession goes to whatever team gets to the out of bounds spot first)

The result: a 6-5 decision, the lowest scoring title game in NCAA history. And while Notre Dame goalie Scott Rodgers was as good as advertised, let’s not pretend that this game was about defense. This game was about Notre Dame playing keepaway, holding the ball for huge chunks of time doing nothing but playing catch. Duke features the best attack in the country, but Ned Crotty (63 assists this season), Max Quinzani (68 goals) and Zach Howell (51 goals) spent most of the game standing and staring at the other end of the field.

In a showcase moment for the sport, with its popularity at an all-time high and the first finals team from West of the Mississippi, it delivered a snoozer.

Don’t Shoot the Messenger (and if the Irish has the ball, I don’t have to worry about that)
This is not meant as a critique of the sport in general. I played a little lacrosse myself back in the day (with an emphasis on the word “little”). I sat at the end of the bench for a Long Island high school in the early 80’s, and found my way to the middle of the bench (3rd and 4th midfield line) for a Fairfield University club team that dominated New England club lacrosse in the late 80’s.

* I graduated in 88, and from 87 to 89 the Stags went 33-2. In ’93 they went Division I and today are good enough that earlier this year they beat one of the teams in yesterday’s final.

I picked up the game late and wasn’t very good – I scored 3 goals in my entire college “career” - but I loved the sport and still do. Today, lacrosse is wildly popular where I live in Rockland County. My 10 year-old daughter plays, as do all five of my Rockland nephews. My two brothers-in-law coach their sons, and a buddy announces high school lacrosse on MSG.

Lacrosse is a genuinely great sport – one that offers the ideal combination of speed, athleticism, toughness, knowledge and grace. But one has to ask: how many coaches across the country watched a mediocre Notre Dame team – one that was unseeded and went 10-7 on the year – get to within one goal of a title, and think, hmmm? Maybe I’ll slow down my offense next year…

And that would be a terrible thing for the sport.

The Fix
Luckily, FreeTime is here to propose a solution – to fix the problem before it manifests itself. You already know what it is, don’t you? You knew it as soon as you saw the basketball shot clock reference above. It was once said that the only man who could stop Michael Jordan was his own coach at North Carolina, Dean Smith. And basketball as a sport does not benefit if the rules can stop Michael Jordan.

Well, we don’t want to stop Ned Crotty, Max Quinzani and Zach Howell either. The NCAA – the only governing body of the sport that matters – should institute a shot clock immediately. I’ll leave the details up to smarter laxheads than me, but there’s no need to be too aggressive right away. I’m leaning towards two minutes but even three might be fine.

But you also need an intent rule. In other words, you can’t have guys launch shots 10 feet over the goal just to reset the clock.

The sport is at a key moment in its growth. Don’t let the Irish Famine slow it down. Literally.

(Hat Tip to the Rock Star, who suggested this post and served as research assistant.)

[This is the fourth in an unplanned series called The Volunteer Commissioner in which I helpfully point out the flaws in various sports and suggest fixes. Previous installments were The Losers Out Manifesto, Swimming is Boring, and Fixing Softball. And before World Cup fever has passed, look for a piece on soccer.]

The Winter Classic

The Yankees equipment manager, Rob Cucuzza, is getting ready for the playoffs. He’s gathering up dozens of pairs of polypropylene* thermal underwear, cold weather batting gloves made with Aegis Micro Shield technologies, officially licensed New York Yankees earmuffs, and fur-lined parkas for the coaching staffs.

*The polypropylene material used in some cold weather gear was developed by a Nobel Prize winner, back when Nobel Prize winners had to, you know, do something in order to win

Mr. Cucuzza has a collection of high-tech cold weather gear that would make Ernest Shackleton weep with envy. And he’s gonna need it because it’s frickin’ cold in New York. As Game 1 of the ALCS starts tonight, the temperature is forecast for 42 degrees, lower with the wind chill. And the baseball playoffs are still scheduled to go another two and a half weeks.

It wasn’t always this way. Babe Ruth and the 1927 Yankees won the World Series on October 8th. Mickey Mantle celebrated the 1956 title on October 10th, and that series went the distance. In 1978, Reggie Jackson had earned his Mr. October moniker by the 17th, and that included an ALCS. Heck, even Derek Jeter and the 1996 Yanks - the first Yankee team to win a championship in the Wild Card era - had wrapped things up by October 26th.

This year, the World Series won’t even start until October 28th. Even if it’s a sweep, it’s guaranteed to go until November. If it goes the distance, Game 7 will be on November 5th. If the Yankees win, they’ll have to combine the Canyon of Heroes parade with the Macy’s Thanksgiving Day parade. (They'll probably let Jeter ride in Santa's sleigh, and Yankee fans will truly believe he was more clutch than St. Nick)

Luckily, I’m not the kind of guy who just sits around and complains about the old days. I bring solutions. And I know how to fix baseball.

Cold Teams
But first, a little more complaining, because cold weather is only part of baseball’s problem. The other, more insidious problem, is that crappy teams keep winning the World Series. Think I’m kidding? Let’s look at recent history.

2006 Cardinals - LaRussa's team scratched out 83 wins during the regular season, had the lowest winning % of all 8 playoff teams, and a losing record in August and September. But they got hot for a couple of weeks and were crowned World Champion.

2004 Red Sox - a very good team, but not good enough to win the AL East. In 2004 they became the 4th Wild Card team in 7 years to win the Series.

2003 Marlins - this time of year, all the "experts", from Steve Phillips to Mike Francesa to the nameless newspaper guys, give their "predictions" about who will win the World Series. The 03 Marlins are a constant reminder as to why these predictions are useless, as everyone had them rated 8 out of 8 of playoff contenders that year.

2000 Yankees - the worst regular season team of the Torre era. They won 87 games, lowest of all the playoff teams, and fewer than every Yankee team since. But the AL East wasn’t very good that year, and 87 wins was good enough for a divisional title. Most years, this team wouldn't have made the playoffs.

Fixing Baseball
How, you are wondering, will I kill both birds with one stone, hit both balls with one bat, field both grounders with one glove? Easy - end the regular season on the last Sunday of September, and add another Wild Card team. Here are the Rules of the FreeTime Playoff system:

1. No matter what, the season ends on the last Sunday in September. If the last Sunday is September 25, that is when the season ends. If the last Sunday is September 30, that is when the season ends. No nonsense like this year when regular season games were being played on October 4.
2. To accommodate rule 1, if necessary the season will start in late March, add more day/night doubleheaders, and/or take fewer days off.
3. All Northern teams will open up on the road. Send the Phillies and Mets down to Miami and Atlanta for the first week of the season.
4. Now, comes the radical part: add a Wild Card team and a round of playoffs to each league.
5. The regular season ends on the last Sunday in September; immediately following the two Wild Cards in each league will play a Mon-Wed 3-game series.
6. The winner of that series - road-weary and pitching-depleted - will immediately fly to the home city of the team with the best record in the league to start the Divisional Series on Thursday.
7. At this point, we essentially resume the same schedule we have now. But because our regular season has ended in September, we have guaranteed the playoffs will not extend into November.

The main benefits of this system should be obvious:

1. An extra Wild Card team keeps more cities interested in baseball late.
2. However, we have made it MUCH harder for a Wild Card to advance. The punishing schedule should eliminate most mediocre Wild Cards going all the way.
3. We have restored something resembling the old Pennant Race. The reward for League Best Record - getting to play a tired, depleted Wild Card team - has real value, rewards season long success, and makes the likelihood of the worthiest team winning higher.
4. The owners and television - Gods that must be given tribute - get their due. More playoff games, a greater likelihood of great teams advancing, and more meaningful September games for more teams.
5. The World Series is finished in October - as God and Kenesaw Mountain Landis intended.

Bob Costas and other "purists" will hate this. But remember something about the purists - they don't care whether or not your team is playing meaningful September games because they get to go to the action wherever it is.

And ignore everyone who complains about the power of television. Television wants the most fans possible to see the games - a desire that dovetails with the needs of the most fans, no? Costas might like afternoon playoff games, but the rest of us have to go to work.

And as for the Yankees and Angels, bundle up. It's cold out there.

Note: This is part of the Volunteer Commissioner series, in which I graciously fix problems in various sports. The others posts in the series are:

Fixing Softball (Women's softball)

The Loser's Out Manifesto (Pick-up basketball)

The Beautiful Game's Flaw (soccer)

The Slowest Game (lacrosse).

Swimming is Boring (Swimming)

You're welcome.

Fixing Softball

Some sports, like swimming and golfing and nearly all track and field events, feature an athlete competing against himself. You put up the best score or time possible and hope it is good enough to be the best.

But in many other sports, like boxing and tennis and nearly all team sports, you compete against another team or athlete, and react to their actions. In those cases, the entertainment value rests largely on the maintenance of a balance of power.

For example, baseball has been played professionally for over a century, and generally speaking balance has been maintained between run prevention (pitching and fielding) and run creation (hitting and running). Pitchers have occasionally gotten the upper hand (like in the 60’s) and hitters have occasionally gotten the upper hand (recently), but the sport tends to do little tweaks like lowering the mound or cracking down on steroids when these things get out of hand.

In Stephen Jay Gould’s book Full House: The Spread of Excellence from Plato to Darwin, he shows how, even as .400 hitters have disappeared from baseball, the league batting average has remained an almost constant .272. That is balance.

So, too, in football. As defensive players get bigger and stronger and more lethal, and as defensive schemes get more complicated, the NFL makes little tweaks to the rules to keep the offense up to speed. (And yes, in both baseball and football, the rules-makers tend to, if anything, give an edge to the scorers, as that’s what people like to see).

And some times, the balance is threatened by advances in equipment. The ability of male tennis players to crush 150 mile per hour serves with larger racquets forced the governing bodies to tweak their rules to allow for longer volleys.

This is a rather longwinded way of saying that in some sports the balance has been lost, making the game boring, saddled with odd rules to address the balance problem, or both. Welcome to Women’s Softball.

The Hurler’s Dominance

This is the part of the article where I intended to present you with statistics demonstrating how pitchers utterly and completely dominate softball, and then attempt some sort of explanation as to why this is so. So I began googling around for statistics and found a piece by Rob Neyer, a baseball writer at whose altar I worship. So I will liberally quote from his piece, The Softer They Come: Why is it So Hard to Hit a Softball:

Ted Williams was fond of saying that the toughest thing in sports is hitting a round ball with a round bat. Williams was right, just not as precise as he could have been. The toughest thing in sports is to hit a round ball with a round bat when the round ball is thrown underhand from 40 feet away...In the 2000 Olympics, the gold-medal-winning U.S. softball team allowed only seven runs and 24 hits in 10 games.

This year, Team USA won again and was even more dominant. In nine games, the Americans allowed one run and 18 hits... But it's usually not just Team USA's opponents who struggle to score. In 2000, in their six games against China, Japan, and Australia—arguably the Americans' toughest competition—the U.S. team scored only six runs...Though the Americans did much better this time around with 51 runs in nine games, when great players face off, softball is clearly a pitcher's game. In this year's Olympics, there were 19 games that didn't include weak sisters Greece and Italy. In those games, an average of 3.8 runs were scored per seven innings.

Why is it so hard to hit a softball? Distance, time, and uncertainty. In international competition, the pitcher's plate (or "rubber," as baseball fans know it) is only 43 feet from home plate. What's more, thanks to liberal rules, softball pitchers release the ball from even closer than that, slightly less than 40 feet—about 20 feet closer than a baseball pitcher. Top softball pitchers like Jennie Finch can throw roughly 70 miles per hour, the equivalent of a low-90s fastball thrown from 60 feet away. There are, of course, many hundreds of human beings who can hit a low-90s fastball. But most of them play professional baseball, and nearly all of them are men. And anyway, fast-pitch pitchers don't just throw fastballs. They keep the batters guessing with rise balls, drop balls, curves, and in-shoots. Pitchers with speed and a varied repertoire—like current U.S. Olympians Finch, Lisa Fernandez, and Cat Osterman—make life almost impossible for even the best hitters.

In softball, there are no famous hitters, only famous pitchers.


I couldn’t say it better myself.

The FixLuckily, I’m here to offer my free advice. The powers that be in softball have come up with one fix, a silly one, to address its problems. Realizing that low-scoring games could go on for weeks and weeks as overmatched hitters helplessly flail at lightning fast rise balls, they actually begin extra innings with a runner on second. Yes, you read that right: as the players take the field to begin a half inning, there’s a guy (well, a gal actually) at second. This is an abomination.

There’s a much easier fix, and I offer it now in all its elegant simplity: move the mound back.

Sadly, my advice comes too late: softball is not returning as an Olympic event. For the fascinating backstory, click here.

Other Stories in the Volunteer Commissioner series:

Note: This is part of the Volunteer Commissioner series, in which I graciously fix problems in various sports. The others posts in the series are:
Fixing Softball (Women's softball)
The Loser's Out Manifesto (Pick-up basketball)
The Beautiful Game's Flaw (soccer)
The Slowest Game (lacrosse). 
Swimming is Boring (Swimming)
The Winter Classic (Baseball)

You’re welcome. Unfortunately, swimming is unfixable.]