![Ernie Banks, who passed away last Friday, helped build a legacy that former Commissioner Bud Selig pissed away. Recovering from the Selig era will require big changes to the game. [Credit: Gannett]](https://i0.wp.com/www.dougsbriefcase.com/blog/wp-content/uploads/2015/01/credit-gannett.jpg)
Ernie Banks, who passed away last Friday, helped build a legacy that former Commissioner Bud Selig pissed away. Recovering from the Selig era will require big changes to the game. [Credit: Gannett]
Mr. Banks will be missed.
He was part of the generation of African-American players who transformed the sport during the 1950s and 1960s, helping build a fan base that deteriorated during Selig’s seemingly interminable 23-year tenure. The task of restoring that fan base and saving Mr. Banks’ game now falls to Selig’s successor.
Banks began his professional playing days at age 19 with the Kansas City Monarchs of the Negro Leagues. He joined the Cubs in 1953 as part of the first generation of African-American players in major league baseball. With the notable exception of Willie Mays, most of the players in that generation followed Robinson’s example of going about their business stoically, suppressing their emotions and letting their performance on the field discredit racism’s hateful dogmas.
Banks was different, a man of unbridled ebullience. Baseball, with its grind of 162 games over the course of six months, generally favors men of even temperament. Banks was not of that disposition. He reveled in the game, particularly when played in what he called “the friendly confines of Wrigley Field.”
Those confines were not so friendly to the home team. Throughout his 19-year career, Banks played for some Cubs teams that were dreadful and one that came heartbreakingly close to success. The Cubs lost 1544 games during the 18 seasons in which he played regularly, an average of nearly 86 times per year. No man played in more major league games (2528) without ever appearing in the post-season. But that never dampened Banks’ enthusiasm. Throughout long and disappointing years that might have wounded a lesser soul, the man known as Mr. Cub lived by the motto of “Let’s play two!”
Banks is remembered more for that boyish fervor than for his accomplishments on the field. That is too bad. He was the seventh most productive player of the 1950s as measured by a statistic called Wins Above Replacement (WAR), despite the fact that he didn’t play regularly until 1954. His career WAR ranks him 15th all-time among shortstops, but that is deceiving. Banks played just eight full seasons (1954–1961) at that position, before shifting to first base. Comparing those eight seasons against the first eight seasons of other great shortstops, Banks ranks third in WAR, behind only Honus Wagner and Alex Rodriguez, and ahead of Derek Jeter, Cal Ripken, Ozzie Smith, Lou Boudreau, Arky Vaughan and every other shortstop in the game’s history.
He was twice MVP, fourteen times an All-Star, led the league in home runs and RBI twice each, and won a Gold Glove. In 1955, he became the first shortstop in history to hit 40 home runs, a milestone he would surpass four more times over the next five seasons. In 1957, Hank Aaron won the National League home run crown with 44; Banks hit 43. Banks would go on to lead the league in homers in two of the next three seasons. Between 1954 and 1961, Banks hit 296 homers to Aaron’s 253. A knee injury stunted his offensive output and limited him defensively, resulting in his shift to first base in 1962. But he remains one of the game’s all-time sluggers, in 1970 becoming just the ninth player in history to hit 500 homers. He retired with 512.
During Banks’ generation, baseball was inarguably the country’s most popular sport. He, Aaron, Mays, Frank Robinson and others became role models for the next generation of African-American stars like Reggie Jackson, Eddie Murray, Dave Winfield and Willie Stargell.
Under Selig, whose tenure included a canceled World Series, a suspended All-Star game, two strikes and a lockout, and the worst scandal in the history of American sport, the game’s popularity declined, its TV ratings cratered and Dominicans came to outnumber African Americans on major league rosters. Baseball’s fan base now consists primarily of caucasians who became acquainted with the game during the 1950s and 1960s, the era of Banks, Aaron, Mays and Mantle.
The new commissioner cannot hope to restore baseball to its previous stature, but must get on with the work of removing some of the rot of Selig’s tenure. He should begin by addressing the game’s length and pace. In 1954, Banks’ first full season in the big leagues, it took an average of 2:23 to complete a game. Last year, that had risen to 3:09. That is an extra 46 minutes of batters stepping out of the box, pitchers rubbing baseballs while staring off into the distance, calls to the bullpen and litigation’s latest incursion into American culture: appeals necessitating endless replays.
Reducing the length of games is easily accomplished by enforcing the rules. Rule 8.04 requires the pitcher to deliver the ball within 12 seconds of receiving it from the catcher, if the bases are empty. In 2014, the game paused for an average of 23 seconds between pitches, nearly twice as long as the rules prescribe.
MLB will begin to address this issue with the introduction of a pitch clock in minor league games. Pitchers will be required to come set within 20 seconds of receiving the ball from the catcher. The rules also would place a time limit on pitching changes, shorten the break between innings, and require a hitter to keep one foot in the batters box at all times. If those changes improve the pace of minor league games, owners may approve their incorporation into major league baseball by 2016.
A second technology-based rule change would improve the game’s integrity and perhaps shorten games as well. That is the matter of calling balls and strikes. A year ago, Scott Lindholm of Beyond the Boxscore published an intriguing study of how accurately umpires call ball and strikes. His conclusion: not very accurately at all.
Using PITCHf/x technology to examine the nearly 2.3 million pitches at which batters did not swing over six seasons, Lindholm found that umpires made the wrong call about 15 percent of the time. That is more than 342,000 incorrect calls over the course of six seasons, an average of more than 57,000 per year, or roughly 31 per game.
Those missed calls can profoundly affect outcomes. One recent study found that hitters batted .338 with a 2–1 count, but just .178 with a 1–2 count. The difference between calling a strike and calling a ball with a 1–1 count has enormous and potentially game-changing implications. The cumulative effect of 31 erroneous calls over the course of a game almost certainly outweighs the effect of plays that are subject to time-consuming reviews.
Lindholm found that the umpire with the worst performance erred 17 percent of the time, while the best missed on 12.6 percent of pitches, about one pitch in eight. This suggests that accurately calling balls and strikes is beyond the capacity of even the most highly-trained and capable umpires.
Research by Etan Green of FiveThirtyEight Sports found evidence of psychological patterns that contribute to this inaccuracy. His data show that umpires are far less likely to call a third strike or a fourth ball, a bias that results in longer plate appearances, more pitches and longer games.
So why not relieve umpires of that responsibility, Lindholm and Green argue? Technology has advanced to the point that computers can call balls and strikes quickly, without emotion and with near-perfect accuracy. Implementing this technology would make the game more fair and calls more consistent, without the deadening side effects of replays and appeals.
Such a change would offend the sensibilities of most traditionalists, of whom I am one. But we are not the people the new commissioner should worry much about. If we stayed with the game through the ghastly Selig era, we won’t be driven away by changes that shorten games and adjudicate them more fairly. The challenge is to bring a generation raised on Instagram and smartphones to a game that flourished in the age of radio and black-and-white television.
Baseball will never recover the stature it held when Ernie Banks played in the friendly confines. But the new commissioner can perhaps make some sensible changes that can save Mr. Banks’ game from becoming a museum piece.