Kinda wanted to wait until the offseason to have this discussion, but I think with this whole Stall rage fest over bat flips now's a good time too.
I implore you to watch this video if you haven't seen it. There are a lot of really strong points in that video about what is wrong with the ideas of baseball. Baseball has a real problem with it's regulation of entertainment in the game. What the hell happened to the fun of the game that you saw from Ricky Henderson or the carnivals of the negro leagues? Sending midgets up to bat for a gimmick. These unwritten rules of baseball are keeping the game back. Not just as a race thing, but just as a sport.
This game needs to loosen up and loosen up fast. We have a new commissioner who is trying to make this game more accessible to a younger generation. The pace of play rules are a good start and the expansion of social media also makes the game accessible. But these are not the issues with the game. The real issue is that the game has lost it's entertainment. It's lost the personality and the flash that it once had by adhering to the rules of players not being able to celebrate home runs or stolen bases.
Honestly, check out this next video.
Honestly when I see this, I can't help but to think of the NBA and Slam Dunks. Slam Dunks are huge, they are viral, they are entertaining, and they are a part of what makes basketball fun to watch. Why is it such a big deal for our entertainers to be entertaining? This is a game after all. If people want to celebrate home runs (which are more and more rare) why the hell shouldn't they be able to do it? Because it hurts the pitchers feelings?
I played in a somewhat competitive Blitzball league this summer with a few of my old high school friends, and we routinely preformed bat flips, ran trick baserunning plays, preformed hijinks, and had a ball just playing the game. This is a sport, this isn't a freaking test where everyone needs to stay quiet and orderly until the bell rings. This is a sport.
It is really easy to make baseball entertaining again. It is really easy to turn our sport into the fun, carnival like atmosphere that it is in latin american and asian countries. It's really easy to go back to having baseball be fun again. But for that to happen, we need to start taking baseball for what it is. Entertainment.
We need to start as a fan base going after these old white man civil war era baseball dogmas about how this game should be played and start having fun again.