Wytiaz: Baseball season needs to be shorter, not longer

Put on your scarf and zip up your parka, because it’s time for … baseball?

As the cameras… Put on your scarf and zip up your parka, because it’s time for … baseball?

As the cameras scanned the crowd during Game 1 of the 2011 World Series in St. Louis, fans were dressed in their winter apparel, braving the 44-degree weather to watch the Cardinals take on the Texas Rangers.

The baseball season begins in early April, and, after a 162-game regular-season schedule, it is October by the time playoffs and the World Series come around. This extension into the fall months takes away from baseball’s appeal and puts it in tough competition with America’s growing national pastime: football.

My best memories of baseball are those associated with the summer season. Whether it was playing catch in the backyard or attending a Pirates game with no threat of school the next day, baseball represented the ease and sense of freedom that came with summer. The sport, with its long American history and leisurely pace, fits in well with the lazy days of summer. Taking in a game at the ballpark is made all the more enjoyable by pleasant weather and clear night skies.

However, the current baseball schedule extends late into September and October — when all the kids have gone back to school and the weather has turned cool. Even worse, the MLB is taking steps in the wrong direction. According to ESPN reports, Commissioner Bud Selig is working toward expanding the number of playoff teams from eight to 10 for the 2012 season. Such proposals make it seem as if the prospect of playing baseball right before Thanksgiving might not be so far-fetched.

It would seem fitting for baseball to end with the close of summer. If the World Series were played at the end of August, it could serve as a finale to the season — a sort of closure for fans and vacationers alike. But the playoffs drag on unnecessarily, and baseball loses interested followers as a result.

For example: USA Today reported that while the Green Bay Packers’ lopsided victory over the Denver Broncos at the beginning of this month drew 44.1 percent of Milwuakee households to the TV, a televised Milwaukee Brewers playoff game against Arizona only drew 20.3 percent that same day. Down in Phoenix, the same baseball game drew in 5.7 percent of households while the NFL matchup between the Cardinals and the Giants drew 21.5 percent of local households as viewers.

While cold weather might certainly deter fans from attending baseball games, there is perhaps a greater force at work in autumn that contributes to baseball’s declining popularity: the NFL.

Football is quickly becoming the most popular sport in the nation, and its seasonal overlap with the MLB playoffs and the World Series is a detriment to the game of baseball. Last season, the NFL scheduled a televised game the same night as Game 1 of the World Series for the first time since 1993. The reason football hadn’t come up against baseball in so long was because “America’s pasttime” had always trumped the NFL. But NFL Commisioner Roger Goodell thought his league could finally win the ratings race. He was right. The Sunday night game between the New Orleans Saints and the Pittsburgh Steelers was seen in 10.7 percent of homes, while Game 1 only managed only a 9.0 percent count. The win for the NFL marked a cultural shift in America.

A telling example of baseball’s inability to compete with football was seen in week four of the NFL season, when the 0-3 Indianapolis Colts took on the Tampa Bay Buccaneers in a Monday Night Football matchup. At nearly the same time, an MLB playoff game between the New York Yankees and the Detroit Tigers was taking place.

Surely a postseason contest with implications for both teams should trump the importance of an early-season football game — and one featuring a winless team, nonetheless.

Television rankings proved otherwise.  According to NBCsports.com, more than 10 million viewers tuned in to watch the Peyton Manning-less Colts fall to the Bucs while about 6 million took in the MLB playoffs.

Such a statistic is telling of the influence of the NFL in our sports culture. Even seemingly meaningless early games garner attention for their fantasy football implications, and the amount of television time devoted to NFL analysis is almost absurd. Baseball cannot compete with football for national attention. And it doesn’t have to.

In the early 1960’s, the MLB extended its regular season from 154 to its current 162 games. There is no need for such a lengthy regular season. Even cutting back to the 154-game schedule would help ensure that baseball does not extend into the snowy season. The easiest way to make these cuts involves reducing the number of division games.

In 2011, the Pirates played the National League Central Champion Milwaukee Brewers in five three-game series. By cutting back to just three series between divisional opponents, six games would be saved, and rivalries would not suffer — nine contests would be enough to foster familiar competition.

I love baseball. There is something nostalgic about the sport, and I cannot imagine a summer without frequent trips to PNC Park. I want others to be able to enjoy the baseball season as well. But with the threat of sub-zero temperatures at the World Series and the Steelers game on the other channel, the competition might be too much.