SO, YOU and I are on a pair of bar stools, big screens all around. We are doing what we should be doing amid such a scene: watching, opining, and above all, fixing.
Yeah, fixing. No matter what our favorite sport, we're all repairmen at heart. At one time or another, each of us has been outraged by something that hurts our favorite team, dulls the action, or simply makes no sense. At one time or another, each of us has come up with an improvement or two or 20.
So without further ado, here are some of the fixes my barstool friends and I have proposed over the last few months. Some are truly inspired. Some are late-night genius.
And some are, well, you know . . . it gets late early on those stools sometimes.
The top topic on too many wintry nights around here is the dreaded shootout. Created to heighten fan interest, the only thing heightened around here is despair. But even if the rest of the Flyers could match Danny Briere's proficiency or even if Dr. Joel Fish could make some headway with Ilya Bryzgalov - get it, head-way? - the plain fact is that it is the biggest and dumbest rules blunder in all of professional sports.
Invented to avoid ties, it often encourages teams, especially in the 5-minute, four-on-four, to seek a stalemate and take their chances in the shootout. Especially if said team is ahead in the standings. Playoff spots and seedings are affected by a facet of the game that does not exist in the postseason. Nor should it.
The NHL has done wonders to make itself relevant again in the crowded sports landscape, but this is one big slew foot. If you must have a winner for a regular-season game, at least make the shootout a tiebreaker category, not something that determines the playoff teams themselves. The first tiebreaker would be number of regulation wins, as it is now. The record in shootouts, second. I could live with that.
Anyone who knows me even a little knows what's coming. Time stoppages in baseball - a sport that is, by nature, slower than desert grass - absolutely tortures the paying public.
The retirements of Jorge Posada and Tony La Russa will help, of course. But baseball desperately needs a timeout structure. Three per inning or per pitcher, take your pick. That means charging anybody on the defensive team who calls time: the catcher, the shortstop, the manager.
