As I write this, one week remains in the 2010 Major League regular season, and we’re looking at another MLB playoff tournament. In recent years (what we clumsily refer to as the wild-card era of baseball), the playoffs have stretched later into the fall. This has led to, among other things, some games on bitterly cold nights. When the Phils and Rays wore those caps with earflaps in 2008, I laughed (and asked for one for Christmas, because I like earflaps, and as a vote of confidence in Jimmy Rollins, who was the most prominent Phillie to wear one in the field).

But let’s face it – baseball shouldn’t be a winter game in the continental USA. And it appears that after decades of stretching the schedule, to the point where we can reasonably expect the World Series to finish in November, MLB’s poobahs have dimly realized this. And, like a pitcher haplessly chasing a squeeze bunt down the third base line, they’re trying to do something about it. One news item I missed back in spring training was that the schedules of the League Championship Series will be shorter for 2010, dropping the off day between games 4 and 5. This makes the playoffs one day shorter (ooooh!), but the main effect is that it tests the pitching depth of the playoff teams (a good thing, I think). In spite of this, we still get a schedule where the teams in one NL Division Series this year will get an off day between games 1 and 2. Yeah, I know, it means it’s possible for devoted fans (like me) to watch every single playoff game live… but you know what? I have a DVR, and these days, so do many fans. Please, guys, play 4 games each day the first 2 days and shunt one or two to another cable channel. We can record the game we’re least interested in and watch the rest live, and I doubt the ad revenue will be reduced. (We can rest assured that the Yankees will get scheduled into New York prime time as often as MLB can figure out how to do it.)

That’s not all, though. In 2011, MLB will take an even bigger step away from frigid November games by… get this… moving the whole regular season half a week earlier. Duh! Now the Twins, Indians and Tigers will have to start their seasons with longer road trips! Yeah, that’s a big help.

My point here is that the changes don’t go far enough. In my opinion, there’s nothing wrong with baseball in late September. But by late October, they should already be done, and frankly, I think the first week of April should be avoided as well. More on this in a future post.

Keys: baseball,television