4 hours ago, Texsox said:

 

I believe you are speaking for a lot of hard core fans. At least I hope so. But I think we've seen business take over tradition post Curt Flood.

If three fans take our place what direction should MLB go? As we know it's a business. Using the Cubs versus Sox battle for market share as an example. Most of us know intelligent, baseball fans of both teams. Those may be split fairly evenly between the teams. We joke about the idiot Cub fans but those idiots are the numbers that shift back and forth between teams. We complain about bandwagon jumpers, but same thing, those are the groups marketing is fighting over. 

All those silly promotion nights? Those are not for the hardcore fan. 

Why did the AL add the DH? Not for hardcore fans, but to add a little star power in a line up and excite the casual fan. Purists disliked it but the common fan won. Night games? Hard core fans took vacation days to watch day games, not casual fans. 

For me I enjoy watching on person two evenly matched teams go at it. I don't need bobbleheads and fireworks. I doesn't need  to be a playoff game, although meaningless September games at the MLB level seem silly. 

 

I will take issue with you on one simple thing. The DH was added out of desperation. There was just no hitting in the American League. In 1968, Carl Yastremski won the AL batting title with a .301 average and was the only .300 hitter in the league. Bill Melton won the home run championship in 1971 with 33. Three years later, Dick Allen won it with 32. It wasn't a matter of drawing in the casual fan. Fans didn't like the AL because it was full of banjo hitters. The Sox had horrible offensive teams from the mid-late 1960s. Attendance plummeted because no one wanted to see a team of .230 hitters. In 1970, the Sox didn't even draw 500,000. Something had to be done. The DH was created and it has worked fairly well. I don't think I will say the same for the new diluted playoff system.

51 minutes ago, NWINFan said:

I will take issue with you on one simple thing. The DH was added out of desperation. There was just no hitting in the American League. In 1968, Carl Yastremski won the AL batting title with a .301 average and was the only .300 hitter in the league. Bill Melton won the home run championship in 1971 with 33. Three years later, Dick Allen won it with 32. It wasn't a matter of drawing in the casual fan. Fans didn't like the AL because it was full of banjo hitters. The Sox had horrible offensive teams from the mid-late 1960s. Attendance plummeted because no one wanted to see a team of .230 hitters. In 1970, the Sox didn't even draw 500,000. Something had to be done. The DH was created and it has worked fairly well. I don't think I will say the same for the new diluted playoff system.

I agree. They made the change to increase attendance. Do you think the hard core fans stopped attending or the casual fans? 

I think they need to end the regular season in mid September, make each of the regular season games more important. 

1 hour ago, NWINFan said:

I will take issue with you on one simple thing. The DH was added out of desperation. There was just no hitting in the American League. In 1968, Carl Yastremski won the AL batting title with a .301 average and was the only .300 hitter in the league. Bill Melton won the home run championship in 1971 with 33. Three years later, Dick Allen won it with 32. It wasn't a matter of drawing in the casual fan. Fans didn't like the AL because it was full of banjo hitters. The Sox had horrible offensive teams from the mid-late 1960s. Attendance plummeted because no one wanted to see a team of .230 hitters. In 1970, the Sox didn't even draw 500,000. Something had to be done. The DH was created and it has worked fairly well. I don't think I will say the same for the new diluted playoff system.

That still sounds a lot like the 1984-1989 White Sox offenses...

2 hours ago, caulfield12 said:

That still sounds a lot like the 1984-1989 White Sox offenses...

Won't argue with you there. The results were the same.