Former Stars to Help Fix Major League Baseball

As some of you who follow sports may know, Magic Johnson (and Friends!) recently bought into become a partial owner of the Los Angeles Dodgers. Many people in sports think that this is the most important thing that baseball can do to make itself more accessible to it's slowly declining fan base. This "celebrity" or "super star" involvement has most certainly proven itself to work for teams like the Pacers (NBA) and Penguins (NHL), but it is not a "sure thing." Otis Smith of Magic fame (infamy) was an NBA player as well. And I hope I'm not alone in saying that I ha--that he should no longer be a part of the Magic Organization.

So while, indeed, Magic Johnson's (he's already a minority stockholder in the Lakers, and the fans love it) move is definitely a stroke of genius by and for the Dodgers (on par with the Rangers hiring Nolan Ryan as their Fearless Leader and the failure of the Jaguars to acquire Tebow,) it's not going to fix the core problem that the MLB is having in regards to business...

Baseball is freaking boring.

It's nearly impossible to watch an entire game of baseball without wondering why you aren't doing something else. Didn't I need to mow the lawn or something?

I'll even take you a step further, why watch an entire game of baseball (even if it is the Braves, I know you really really love the Braves) when you can turn on Sports Center in the morning and see every important play that happened in the entire game. Sure you run the risk of hearing something along the lines of "This is the 15th game in a row the Clippers have won at home on a Tuesday when Magic Johnson ate a hot dog with his left hand in Boston." But thems are just the breaks.

Assistant: Pssst. Dude. The boss wants you to tell them about the amount of sodas consumed this year in relation to last year in Los Angeles as a factor in how the Orlando Magic are playing this season as compared to last.

Stuart Scott: Well, I just don't see how that's relevant at all. In any way.

Assistant: Relevant? Dude, this is SportsCenter.

Moving on. I read an interesting article last year (it was actually written in 2000) about how much baseball is actually played during a Major League Baseball game.

It was not pretty. The most important quote I found in the article (although there are so many interesting tidbits) was this:

"Time the baseball was actually in play, including pitches, batted balls, foul balls, pickoff attempts, relays, throws to bases and anything else even Bob Costas might consider actual sporting activity (and I was being generous with the stopwatch): 12 minutes, 22 seconds."

This is baseball's core problem. It's not fun to watch. Is it fun to play? Of course. Why else would we make it easier and change the rules so you could drink alcohol while you play?

The future of sports. Only bowling could possibly be better.

But I'm not the one who has to worry about how baseball can save itself. I don't need to figure out how management needs to change, ownership needs to change or even what rules they need to change.

All I need to do is change the channel.