FanPost

Manfred's Top Priority

"I better not see this on ebay." - Rob Tringali/Getty Images

Rob Manfred became the 10th commissioner of MLB on January 25. He was formerly the MLB COO and has experience dealing with everything from labor relations to finance. Early in his tenure, much has been made of his interest in increasing the pace of play - which I wrote about in another fanpost - and injecting offense into the game. With that background, it may surprise you to learn what he sees as his top priority:

My top priority is to bring more people into our game -- at all levels and from all communities. Specifically, I plan to make the game more accessible to those in underserved areas, especially in the urban areas where fields and infrastructure are harder to find. Giving more kids the opportunity to play will inspire a new generation to fall in love with baseball just as we did when we were kids. Expanding Little League, RBI and other youth baseball programs will also help sustain a steady and wide talent pool from which our clubs can draw great players and create lifelong fans.

Manfred wants to reach out to the youth. In my opinion, this is a bold shift in perspective for MLB. Manfred's predecessor, Bud Selig, did not embrace technology, to put it mildly. In addition, MLB has taken a different tact toward public relations than other sports. Where the NBA and NFL have learned to market players and appeal to younger crowds through all forms of social media, MLB has tried to push for its own media warehouse to be the sole source of MLB video (which they seem to be easing off of in recent years). The point is, Manfred has work to do, and I'm hopeful that he succeeds.

Manfred is the first commissioner to be a graduate of Little League, and his first acts as commissioner-elect was to attend the Little League World Series in Williamsport, PA. (From ages 10 to 18, I played Little League baseball. My mother was the local League President and eventually an Assistant District Administrator. Through her position there, I had the opportunity to attend the 50th Little League World Series in 1996. It is an incredible environment, and one that you all should take in at some point.) Little League Baseball recognizes the significance of Manfred's achievement, and they presented him with a copy of the roster from his 1969 team from their archives.

In addition to reaching the children, Manfred is reaching out to the advanced amateur ranks as well. In early January, he spoke at the American Baseball Coaches Association (ABCA) convention in Florida. He spoke of "One Baseball", his term for MLB's emphasis on engaging the amateur baseball community and fostering good relationships there. This is particularly important in the college ranks, where professional baseball is often seen as the adversary, luring prime talent away from college programs and even holding the MLB draft during the NCAA tournament. At ABCA, Manfred said:

"The College World Series and our draft, you could not make those two events more in conflict if you tried. And we have to be smart enough to make the College World Series better for college coaches and players, and make our draft a better product for MLB."

Any effort to change the draft to a date outside of June must be collectively bargained with MLBPA, so don't expect a change to happen right away. Still, the point is that the Commissioner is making the effort to reach out to work with the amateur community instead of against it.

Will these efforts make a difference? I believe they can, but there's still a long way to go. MLB's motivation for pursuing the youth is two-fold: talent and fans. They recognize that the next generation of baseball players will come from today's youth, and they don't want to lose the best athletes to other sports. At the same time, having no fans to watch that generation play would be bad for business. Manfred lays it out himself:

"I see this as two different things. One is about attendance and one is about the talent pool. Our product is compelling when we have the best possible athletes on the field. You do that by making sure the best athletes start and continue to play the game for as long as possible when they're kids. A subsidiary benefit to youth participation is that our studies show a major determinant of fan affinity is when somebody played as a kid. That's when the two points start to come together."

Manfred hits on an important point here. "A major determinant of fan affinity is when somebody played as a kid." What else can be done to energize the fandom of the youth?

Here's where I break from what I've read - now that I've spent 800 words introducing the topic - and share some of my own thoughts. I hope you all will add your thoughts in the comments.

  1. Encourage kids to attend games in person. There's nothing quite like going to a game as a kid. Maybe if you live in the city and can attend games regularly it isn't so novel. For me, I remember the first game I ever attended. I was 7 and we were in the nosebleed seats at Memorial Stadium in Baltimore in August of 1984. The Orioles were the local team, and they lost 2-1. I was hooked though. It was exciting, totally different from the comedy of errors that I was used to seeing in my tee ball games. In a way, it was the perfect time. I was old enough to understand what was happening, but young enough to still find myself in awe of the environment.

    Now, it's one thing to say "encourage kids to attend games in person" and another thing to have a plan. I'd suggest teams offer free tickets to families of youth baseball organizations. I think teams usually offer group ticket sales or kids get in free with a paying adult or something like that, but I mean FREE. Specifically, make the offer to families of kids who are have just graduated to kid-pitch baseball, as I think that's the perfect age. In addition, have some kind of giveaway for the kids and make sure there is at least one player from the home team to sign an autograph for each kid in attendance. You want to make a fan for life? That's where you start.

  2. Encourage more autograph signing - especially for kids. There's nothing more heartbreaking to a young kid (and his or her parents) than to be feet away from your favorite player, begging for an autograph, and having it fall on deaf ears. Just baseballs. There's no need for anything else. They can be used practice balls. The kids don't care. Instead, players today (who rarely sign anyway) end up signing for the collectors - the guys with stacks of cards that they have to sort through before finding whatever player is giving them the time of day - or for some hot 18-year-old girl. It shouldn't be that way. When batting practice is over, have everyone sign a baseball or two, and then let them walk them up to a kid in the stands. It would only take a minute. Maybe you look at free tickets and baseball giveaways as an unnecessary cost. I think it's an investment in the sport's future, and a simple gesture that can really impact a kid.

  3. Embrace tradition. Baseball has a longer history than the other popular sports today. Celebrate it. Market to families. Make commercials featuring fathers and sons sitting together watching a game. Show the kids gathering around for Grandpa's stories from his youth, when Willie Mays and Mickey Mantle (or soon enough, Rickey Henderson and Nolan Ryan) made marks on a young mind that were still fresh decades later. Times change, but baseball is still baseball, and a common bond we all share is that we want to pass our love for the game down to our kids and their kids. Take advantage of and encourage that.

  4. Treat numbers special. Numbers are meaningful in baseball. Celebrate that too. Sabermetrics are great, but how many of us learned to divide by figuring out our batting average (or God forbid, our ERA) while sitting on the bench between innings? No kid is going to understand WAR. But they know what a home run is. Babe Ruth once hit 60 in a season. Roger Maris hit 61. Ruth hit 714 home runs in a career. Hank Aaron hit 755. You all probably already know those numbers. Do the kids? What's more, Maris' 61 came with an asterisk because he played in a (gasp) 162 game season. Aaron wasn't initially embraced because he was a black man breaking a record held by a white icon. Do the numbers 73 and 762 mean anything to you? I had to look up how many homers Bonds hit in a career. Sure there's a backstory - and Bonds' is, at least to some degree, his own making - but it's still a number worth remembering. Numbers like 4256, 56, and 2632 should mean something to this generation. When we were young, before Pete Rose, Ty Cobb collected 4192 hits. Lou Gehrig played in 2130 consecutive games. Those records from our youth have fallen, but new records take their place. I don't even recall how many SB Rickey ended up with, but I sure expect my son to know that number when Billy Hamilton closes in on the record in 2033.

  5. Market the plays. My kids don't care if Derek Jeter or Joey Votto is the "face of MLB". You know what will catch their attention? Seeing Billy Hamilton laying out to catch a sinking liner. Seeing Mike Trout jump nearly over the wall to rob a home run. Seeing Giancarlo Stanton hit a ball completely out of some stadium. As adults, we can appreciate seeing Aroldis Chapman throw 105 MPH. To a kid though? "Oh, another swing and miss. Can I get back to my tablet now?" Market the excitement. And don't leave out the bloopers! Kids like to see grown-ups playing a kids game look just as silly as their little league team. It doesn't happen often, but it does happen. Let the kids see that these grown men play the same game they play and maybe those kids will dream of one day being that grown man playing a kids' game.