Stop Rebooting Baseball

Today’s tv entertainment has been lacking something that stays in high demand. Originality. The concept of originality has been replaced with the dreaded “reboot”. Beavis & Butthead, The Fresh Prince, Rosanne and Saved By the Bell are all shows that have in some manner been rebooted and repackaged mostly with either mixed or negative results. It’s understandable that the viewing public doesn’t want watered down versions of the original or a modern day version of the same ole same ole. People want young, fresh and new. Somebody please get this memo over to MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred and the powers that be at 1271 6th Avenue in New York City.

Baseball is in desperate need of an overhaul. America’s pastime has been living off of the glory days when football and basketball weren’t popular and black and brown talent wasn’t allowed to even display their many talents. Baseball’s refusal to adapt and modernize its game and instead hang its hat on nostalgia and the relics of the past have been an insult to fans and a non-verbal statement of “We don’t need you new fans” for going on 30 years. The Summer of ‘98, better known as the year of Sluggin’, which saw Sammy Sosa & Mark “Big Mac” McGwire was the last time baseball bothered to be relevant. Even then, they threw those heroes under the bus once the Mitchell Report, the federal report on the investigation of steroids and PEDs in baseball, came to light. Since then, the MLB has failed to capitalize off of the Red Sox & Cubs breaking worlds series droughts, the greatness of Mike Trout and Shohei Ohtani and most recently Aaron Judge tying Roger Maris’ 61 year old AL home run record. A record that, even though it’s been eclipsed multiple times, still holds a foolish amount of weight.

The notion that broken records like Maris’ 61 in ‘61 are still the standard is because baseball relies annually upon ghosts to keep the game of baseball alive. They continue to reboot the game like so many of the television networks do hoping to capitalize off of a once popular name as opposed to modernizing, refreshing and cultivating new ideas to link the old with the new. The NBA, NFL and NHL have all created ways to let fans appreciate what was but to embrace and live what is now. The MLB needs to come to terms and take note before their game becomes just a legend like the ones they try so hard to cling to.