What Can Baseball Steal From Other Leagues? What Can It Give Them?

Baseball is now in an interesting spot in how we view it, given the new rules implemented.

Over the last several years, there have been a host of successes: the pitch clock has provided nonstop action, the universal DH has been much needed, and the ABS system has introduced a new form of strategy while keeping the umps accountable.

For a sport that many declared dead year after year, it feels like it’s in good hands! (Until, of course, the looming lockout next year. Let’s enjoy baseball this year blissfully.

That being said, there are always things it could do better, as well as aspects that other leagues may envy in baseball, as it’s a beautiful, 162-game sport.

What could they give one another or learn from each other? This is the Sports League Cultural Exchange.

The NBA to MLB: Marketing of Individual Personalities

Basketball has sneaker culture. We know that Victor Wembanyama is the 7’6 alien because there are no helmets and there are fewer people. They’re much more on top of things with interviews and shows detailing the lives and what makes each player and their playstyle different. Baseball has always longed for that. It’s one thing to have a favorite pitcher or model a swing after someone, but for a league with as many players as we have, more people should know a little bit about them and build connections to them.

Everyone only knows that Mike Trout likes the weather and is an Eagles fan. What else? We should have been wearing his Nike shoes for decades! They’ve done a better job as of late with fewer unwritten rules and more fun- we see Bryce Harper TikToks that are questionable and love Jacob Misiorowski’s affection for Pokémon.

Still, the closest thing we’ve gotten, maybe, was personalized nickname jerseys for Players’ Weekend once, and we couldn’t even get the designs of the uniforms right.

MLB to NBA: Respect of Time

Baseball has significantly trimmed the amount of time off of games with the pitch clock, the very efficient use of ABS, limiting the number of times pitchers can throw over before it’s a balk, and the sport is better for it (aside from the ghostrunner rule in extras. Not a fan.). In 2016, the game length average was a flat 3 hours. The average this year is 2:43, even with the addition of ABS, which added only 3 minutes.

No one knows when a basketball game will start. It will tell you it tips off at 7:30 PM EST, and you’ll turn on the TV at 7:43, and Kendrick Perkins is still giving you inarticulate pregame analysis. The reviews that make the final 5 minutes of playtime 45 minutes long are comical. The NBA needs to be more respectful of time. You can have pregame entrances! Do it before the tip. Do we need 10-minute quarters? That would help, but not necessarily. The replay review process should not only be limited but also pass the sports bar test, where everyone can tell you the call, and then we move along.

NFL to MLB: More “Eventization”

Everything in the NFL is an event. The schedule release is an event. The announcement of the schedule release is an event. There’s a National Tight Ends Day for some reason. Soon enough, there will be an Andy Reid KC Ribs Day!

There’s an International Game now, once a week. We even made up a fake Thanksgiving Eve Holiday to have football. But people watch, and people care about everything that is football-related.

Baseball is 162 games long during the Regular Season, and maybe has these events that are not All-Star Break related:

• Opening Day (yeah, it’s the first one)
• One World Tour Series (Mexico City)
• Rivalry Weekend (with teams that aren’t even rivals)
• The Field of Dreams Game
• Little League Classic
• Days honoring historic players (Jackie Robinson, Lou Gehrig, Roberto Clemente, etc.)

We need more pockets where people will care. 30 teams should each have a unique experience. The NFL is sending teams all over the globe, and we act like it’s a chore to send them to a cornfield in Dyersville, Iowa. How about some games in a mountain range?

How about a game in minor league ballparks where fans are far away from any major league experiences? If players and the league tell us to care, we will care.

MLB to NFL: The NFL’s Own “Midsummer Classic”

The Pro Bowl is dead. The NFL media “the ratings are king! Another win for the league and our GREAT Commissioner, Roger Goodell!” will tell you that 2 million people (all probably under the age of 11) watched a tape-delayed flag football game last year in the week leading up to the Super Bowl, but it has become comical because they won’t admit it is dead in comparison to when we idiotically played another real padded football game expecting no one to get hurt.

The All-Star Break of baseball is brilliantly put towards the middle of the year. There’s still sort of some pageantry with players competing because it used to have home-field advantage in the World Series stakes, and there seems to be a lot of camaraderie between the guys because a large part of baseball throughout youth and professionally is just hangin’ out.

If we’re seriously considering going to an 18-game season, we need a midyear reset in the NFL. No football, just hangin’ out. Give the players a week to decompress and recover at a resort or something, and maybe even stream some events the players are into (Super Bowl Champion and massive human Leonard Williams is into Magic: The Gathering Cards and gardening!). We don’t even need Pro Bowl honors since we have All-Pro Teams. Just kill it entirely.

NHL to MLB: Not Getting Feelings Hurt

This one is more cultural. Hockey players will throw fisticuffs on the ice (where the referees will allow it until they get it out of their system) and then act as if nothing happened afterward and still partake in the handshake line with class as if they didn’t just threaten one another’s sister. Baseball is still the gatekeeping “unwritten rule” sport where Brian McCann used to give you a stern talking to if you did ANY sort of celebration with your teammates.

It’s gotten better, but plunking fastballs inside for teams to come out of the dugout and usually just puff their chests out at one another before mozying back to the dugout because they “took it personally” is maybe one of the most fake tough-guy things in sports.

MLB to NHL: A Series Structure in the Regular Season

Commissioner Gary Bettman has refused to change the playoff seeding format because he wants to “encourage rivalries” between certain teams. Sure, we’ve gotten classic Ovechkin-Crosby series, Oilers and Kings playing one another constantly, and Florida against Tampa as an in-state rivalry. Still, when you have multiple Cup-contending teams playing one another and getting knocked out in the first round, leaving either undeserving or weaker teams playing in the later rounds, you get less-than-optimal series outcomes later on. Colorado, Dallas, and Minnesota all could’ve been Stanley Cup Champions this year in the West, and we were down to just one after two rounds.

We can have rivalries in the NHL if we had the series structure that baseball gives us, where the teams play back-to-backs. Maybe there was a fight the night before, and then they have to face off again immediately the next game in the regular season. There needs to be actual, real vitriol created for rivalries to be meaningful.

Soccer to MLB: Loans

I’m going to map out a hypothetical scenario.

The Colorado Rockies are 40 games under .500 in July (sorry, Rockies, this is HYPOTHETICAL). Catcher Hunter Goodman leads the National League in homers at this time, but no one knows who he is because he plays for the 40-game-below-.500 Colorado Rockies. The Philadelphia Phillies are doing whatever they can to stay alive for one last World Series push and need a power bat. They loan out some sort of asset, cash, prospects, or resources, to the Rockies to have Hunter Goodman for the remainder of the season as a hired assassin.

Goodman becomes a star in Philly, gets cult hero status and stardom from playing in games that matter, and is a mercenary hitter. We get more stars marketed, we get more players who deserve World Series rings on their resumes, and the franchises will eventually get their star back, along with long-term assets to rebuild, without having to COMPLETELY trade a fan favorite.

Transfer loans in baseball.

MLB to Soccer: An Equivalent of a “7th Inning Stretch”

Soccer has a halftime where not much happens, which is surprising given how many beautiful fan traditions there are. We get to take a break with the players and sing “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” and, in some instances, culturally relevant songs like “Cotton Eye Joe” at Rangers games.

Soccer has the anthems done before the games, but taking a moment after all of that sprinting to be with your countrymen or fans of a club would send chills down your spine.