Baseball coaches had their annual convention this week in Anaheim. Here are a few proposals I’ve heard coming from the meetings:
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Coaches want the games sped up. One proposal is to have a catcher wear a helmet with speakers, similar to quarterbacks in the NFL. This would allow the catchers to get the pitch calls in from the dugout quicker. I have my doubts whether this would pass.
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There is a proposal to eliminate the 27-man and 25 percent requirement from athletic scholarships. Right now the rule is that a player on athletic scholarship must receive at least 25 percent tuition paid, and no more than 27 players can be on scholarship. ABCA says 65 percent of coaches are in favor of scrapping those requirements.
https://twitter.com/KendallRogersD1/status/817215310482710528
I know that before the current rules were implemented, DVH often gave “Books” to various players (that is, the only scholarship money that the player got was his books were paid for.)
The rule about the host team using their own dugout just makes sense. It doesn’t make them the home team for the game, just that they aren’t forced into another dugout. Wow, imagine that, a common sense decision!
Speeding up the games is a good idea, but I’m not sure that putting a speaker in the catcher’s helmet would help that much. Some of the things that have been in effect for the last few years have helped (time between half-innings and the pitch clock), but those things only work when there is no one on base. When there is a runner, the batter can step out of the box multiple times and coaches can have discussions with the batter or the pitcher. While I don’t think that you restrict the number of times that the pitcher can throw to first, it would seem that you could limit stepping out of the box and readjusting batting gloves, etc.
Oh and BTW, TV games last longer because they allow more time for commercials. I say make the TV games follow the same time limits as other games.