Jesse Goldberg-Strassler, Mick Gillispie and Kevin Reichard discuss yet another proposal for a 2020 MLB season, why a hard deadline is approaching and the history behind the pitching mound in this week’s Ballpark Digest Broadcaster Chat.
In this chat:
- A discussion of the latest proposal made by MLB owners to the players association: a 76-game season ending Sept. 27, yet more playoff teams and adjustments to compensatory draft picks.
- Not surprising, players were not impressed.
- Why baseball needs to create new fans after the current squabbles over the 2020 season, and why MLB needs to work on its public image.
- Why a Sept. 27 season end and October playoffs make sense: it fills a void in the sports-broadcasting season and won’t run into a potential November-December second wave of the COVID-19 pandemic, as predicted by many experts.
- The looming crisis behind ballpark debt and bonding.
- Why Jesse is excited for the upcoming 2020 MLB draft.
- Notable ballpark promotions, such as dining on the infield and fireworks nights, and which promotions are sustainable and which ones are not.
- Why calling a baseball game off a monitor is a lesser experience, with Jesse and Mick saying they’d always be in the ballpark or the stadium.
- Why the Cubs were pioneers in supporting multiple radio stations broadcasting home games and why baseball needs to bring the games to the fans.
- Jesse outlines the history of the pitchers mound from baseball’s earliest days to 1968, and how changing the height of the mounds impacts play. Today we still see groundskeepers impact the game even though the height of the mound is now set.
Jesse Goldberg-Strassler is the Voice of the Lansing Lugnuts and the author of The Baseball Thesaurus and The Football Thesaurus from August Publications. Mick Gillispie is the Voice of the Tennessee Smokies and a spring-training Voice of the Chicago Cubs. Kevin Reichard is publisher at August Publications and Ballpark Digest.