Let me Check my Schedule

Right off the bat, the Defensive Specialist needs to apologise for his tardiness over the past two weeks. Loyal readers have come to expect a certain level of output from Australia’s premier baseball blogger and quite frankly one post a week is just not going to get it done. The Defensive Specialist would love to say that he’s trying harder to be more productive but the words of his mentor ring loudly in his ear whenever he considers trying harder; “I could walk down to the street corner and find any slappy who’ll come in here and try, just f*cking do it!” How’s that for a credo to live by?

Anyway, the reason for the sluggish output is that the Defensive Specialist has been basking in the miracle of childbirth. The last 7 days have been spent changing nappies, settling and working on the double play feed from second base. With all of that mastered, the Defensive Specialist is ready to get back to business. With a new, self generated time constraint in place, the Defensive Specialist has been thinking long and hard about schedules. How does a man with a million things on the burner fit them all in? Tightly controlled timeframes and schedules that’s how!

Since the Defensive Specialist is now operating on a timetable that is managed to the nearest minute, it seemed like a great opportunity to spend some time talking about the schedule for the upcoming ABL season. Before we do that though, it’s probably worth considering a couple of late name changes that have taken place with 2 of the ABL franchises. Late last week the ABL launched its team names and accompanying websites. The Sydney franchise was originally thought to be called the Sting, but it appears that there may have been conflicts with another prominent Sydney sporting team who already have dibs on the name Sting (or Stingers). You never want to go head to head with a permanent fixture in the Sydney gay and lesbian sporting community!

So in order to avoid a litigation nightmare, the Sydney franchise has gone with the name Blue Sox which may in fact sound even gayer but at least isn’t in use by another team in the immediate vicinity. A cursory glance at the new Sydney website shows that the team colours are primarily powder blue which could make for some woeful looks if players choose to go with high pants and show off their pale hosiery! On the upside, it’s a definitive baseball name (Red Sox & White Sox) and light blue can look really good on the diamond when done tastefully.

Early on the Canberra franchise was rumoured to be called the Canberra Colts, which the Defensive Specialist derided as being completely boring. Such is the Defensive Specialists impact that the powers-that-be swung into action in order to find something a little punchier. Ladies and Gentlemen, the Canberra Calvary! Ok, so that really isn’t any better and did have the Defensive Specialist scouring the Internet looking for Canberra water polo teams with the same name. The one major upside to the team name is that the bugle and charge call that seems synonymous with Australian baseball suddenly resonates with the Canberra franchise like no other.

Lets get back to the schedules. We know that each team will be playing 40 games over the course of the season with 20 at home and 20 on the road. What we don’t officially know is how those games will be dispersed. There has been a lot of scuttlebutt about the schedule in various forums with games said to be played on Wednesdays, Thursdays, Fridays, Saturdays and Sundays in combinations that include double headers.

The thing that intrigues the Defensive Specialist about the schedules is the ability for franchises to pull a crowd during the week. Some may argue that teams would be better off playing 2 double headers on the weekend in order to maximise the number of patrons coming through the gates. Frankly the Defensive Specialist is excited about the possibility of catching a ballgame on a Wednesday night but the greater question is – what sort of crowds will teams manage to draw during the week with work and school playing a key factor in deciding whether or not to head to the yard?

Obviously the argument differs in every state. For an upwardly mobile individual like the Defensive Specialist who chooses to live reasonably close to the central business district in Sydney, getting out to the Blacktown baseball facility in peak hour traffic mid week is an absolute nightmare with travel times easily in excess of an hour. The congested roads may be a significant determinant of crowd size mid week when fans simply don’t want to sit in traffic for large portions of time. On the flipside, the traffic may be less of a problem for baseball fans that don’t live near the city and a mid week game is a great opportunity to take the whole family out.

Another question worth asking is how the crowd sizes may vary from midweek to weekend. One would expect the numbers to be up for weekend games by quite a margin, especially if teams can run smart promotions that draw kids into the action. Recently the Defensive Specialist had an interesting conversation with a peer who argued that perhaps teams should just play 2 double dips on the weekend. His stance was that teams would obviously get greater numbers on the weekend, so why not play all 4 games over 2 days and give the paying fans an awesome experience.

The Defensive Specialist countered that teams would be giving up 2 extra days of gate receipts (unless they pulled the old “clear fans out after game 1 and charge them to come back in for game 2” stunt which would likely lead to a revolt). The comeback to that argument is that gate takings mid week may be insignificant. The great unknown here is how many fans would you expect on a Wednesday or Thursday night?

Another issue with double headers is the impact that it has on local baseball. A double header on Saturday or Sunday affects either a junior or senior league in almost every state in some way, shape or form. If you play a double header on a junior baseball day, you eat into your fan base by eliminating the kids and their parents who would typically come to the game. These are the fans that the ABL wants to attract because A) they normally come in packs; B) they’ll be the future of the league.

Playing a double header on a senior baseball day impacts a portion of the baseball population who are likely to attend a series as well. On top of that, local competitions may be adversely affected because there will likely be ABL players who would also squeeze in a club game that could no longer do so as a result of conflicting schedules.

Double headers are worth avoiding for the impact they have on the player experience. Forget Ernie Banks, the modern day players simply does not enjoy double headers. On top of that, the ABL should be a league that is run along the same lines as professional baseball. That is, players should be playing as often as possible. The majority of players in the competition will either be playing professionally or aspiring to do so. The league will need to be as close to professional baseball as possible in that players are on the field competing almost every single day. Replicating the conditions is critical if the league hopes to be a development ground used by Major League organisations.

In the Defensive Specialists opinion, games spread across the week is the way to go.  If the ultimate goal is to create a viable league that is appealing to Major League teams as an option for prospect development then it has to resemble a professional season in structure and feel. Teams that put together interesting and entertaining packages for fans will draw crowds (and obviously bigger crowds on Fridays and the weekends).  The good news in all of this is that in under 3 months, we’ll know if its going to work or not!