baseball, as with all sports, has a long and storied history with using various performance enhancing drugs to cope with injury and fatigue. amphetamines were commonplace in ball four ... bouton casually discusses greenies, players' coffee vs. regular coffee, etc. there was a sporting news snippet from the 1910's (that i can't find right now) that discussed pitchers dealing with arm fatigue ... the takeaway was that some pitchers preferred cocaine injections, while others preferred morphine. and then there was the steroid era ... lots of attention of course to creating cartoonishly large players, but most of these drugs were to shorten recovery from workouts ... you don't magically get huge from taking steroids.
Interesting ideas by the Marlins, but I'd like to see the MLB take this further by cutting down the number of games from 162 to 100, and trimming the inning count from 9 to 7. Sure, the historical data won't match up, but it would be better for the players and more entertaining for the fans to watch shorter, less frequent games.<p>On an unrelated note, it would be nice if they expanded the playoffs to include 16 teams with the first two rounds being a best out of 5, concluding with the NLCS/ALCS and World Series being a best out of 7, of course. It would get more fanbases interested in their team if they at least made a playoff appearance more often.<p>The sport could use a shot in the arm in terms of viewership as the average age of your typical MLB viewer is ~54 years.<p>[1]<a href="http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-01/fixing-baseballs-old-people-problem-with-merchandise-highlights" rel="nofollow">http://www.bloomberg.com/bw/articles/2014-04-01/fixing-baseb...</a>
I am surprised they focus on the hitters. I thought that the pitchers were the only ones that were a big concern. It sounds like the league needs a rule that each player can only play 5 days with out a mandatory day off.
No one wants to comment on the blindingly obvious startup aspects? When dealing with millions of dollars, experienced professionals don't get shoved like sardines into the smallest possible space, don't even try to produce at world class level for 16 hours a day 7 days a week for years, don't turn to energy drinks and potato chips as a primary source of nutrition... Apparently pro-ball is the "anti-startup" despite the similar focus on individual rock stars and teamwork and millions of dollars on the line. Perhaps they're just dumb jocks, or maybe, just maybe, startup culture is wrong? Obviously its one or the other.