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Improvements on the Field of Play

The committee met for the first time on Thursday, January 14th. Prior to the initial meeting, this is what the commissioner had to say about the committee,

“I’ve encouraged this group to be very blunt. I want these people to discuss anything they want,” Selig said after meeting with the general managers and his executive council on Wednesday. “To synthesize these things I’ve had [Cardinals manager] Tony La Russa and [Braves president] John Schuerholz put together an agenda that has a wide variety of things on it. So we’ll find out how extensive this is tomorrow.”

It is also manned by three other managers, three other people in team management, four former and present GM’s and MLB consultant and Hall of Famer Frank Robinson, plus renowned columnist George Will (per the MLB.com article by Barry M. Bloom last Wednesday).

Here’s another snipet from that article with quotes from Mr. Selig and the listing of the other committee members:

“There will be no sacred cows,” Selig told MLB.com last week.

The four managers on the committee are La Russa, Jim Leyland of the Tigers, Joe Torre of the Dodgers, and Mike Scioscia of the Angels.

From the GM ranks is Schuerholz of the Braves, Andy MacPhail of the Orioles, Mark Shapiro of the Indians, and Terry Ryan, the former GM of the Twins.

Among the owner representatives is Chuck Armstrong, president of the Mariners; Paul Beeston, president of the Blue Jays; Bill DeWitt, chairman of the Cardinals; and Dave Montgomery, president of the Phillies.

“This is an extraordinary committee,” Selig said.

It’s an extraordinary assembly of baseball people, but I’m not sure I’d say it’s an extraordinary committee just yet. I have heard that on the agenda is instant replay and scheduling of the World Series moving forward. Instant replay is on the agenda due to the frequent amount of blown calls this past post-season. Rescheduling the post season is, I believe, an attempt to get the fall classic out of November. There are too many off days and it has been claimed to have broken many a team’s momentum over the past few years since the last change in scheduling.

Personally, I like the idea of both of these topics as both could use some tweaking or expanding. I also think that they should revise the regular season schedule to a less division heavy leaning. Baseball currently has inter-division teams playing 18/19 times against each other, but I’d be all in favor of knocking that down to 14/15 and adding more games from other divisions that teams don’t currently see as often.

What do you all think should also be on the agenda? Also, if you have heard or read anything about the first meeting please add the link to it in the comments section below.

Thanks…

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