Jim Leyland to fix baseball...sort of

Jim Leyland has been asked to be part of a very select committee that has been put together by Bud Selig to "analyze ways to improve" baseball.

He will join 3 other managers: Tony La Russa, Joe Torre and Mike Scioscia along with other greats such as Frank Robinson a number of GM's, owners and even George Will (!). This is a veritable who's who of the baseball world.

So what could such an august body hope to accomplish? Well there are a number of things that many people would like to see to "improve" the National Pastime.

Probably the most often heard complaint is that it is too slow. It is certainly not an exaggeration to say that most Tigers' games are around 3 hours long. I'm sure that this will be a major aspect of the committee's agenda. I'll be curious to hear about how they might tackle this. Thomas Boswell at the Washington Post has a few ideas:

-- I've "timed" every facet of the game. Okay, I'm a nut. But I'm right. The average "mound visit" wastes 60 to 70 seconds. Ban 'em all. Middle-aged guys stay in the dugout. Mike up the pitcher and a coach. Talk all you want. Use a crackberry. But no visits.

-- Putting a clock on mid-inning pitching changes is a must. If it only takes 150 seconds between innings, there's no excuse why "waving for the left-hander" should burn more than three minutes.

-- Sorry about "God Bless America" at the seventh-inning stretch, but it needs to go. It was a fine idea after 9/11. But it has served its purpose. And it wastes two minutes.

-- Yes, of course, wave the hitter to first on an intentional walk.

-- A huge time saver, since every relief pitching change eats about four minutes, would be curtailing the plague of relief specialists who now face only one hitter. This isn't "core" to baseball. It evolved. Then metastasized. Change the rules. A relief pitcher must face two hitters. The effect: more offense, and better pace of play, in late innings.

I don't agree with all of these (ie miking up the pitcher), but shortening the time for relievers to start pitching and eliminating God Bless America are fine with me. Do you remember Posada walking to the mound after every pitch during the last World Series? That was an exception, but it certainly slowed the game down.

With all of the games now televised that also slows down the game. We have to watch the ads because they support the TV. Baseball on TV can't survive without it and baseball without TV can't survive it's current cost structures, so that is a tricky problem.

Of course one of the beautiful things about baseball is that time is not relevant. You have to get 3 outs per inning. Sometimes that takes 5 minutes and sometimes it takes 30 minutes. You can't run down the clock, you have to pitch the ball and do your best. I would hate to see that disappear.

It thinks that the group of men that Selig has brought together will be able to improve the game and I am glad that Jim Leyland is one of the ones chosen for this task.