Dear Rob Manfred

Dear Rob,

Congratulations on your ascension to Commissioner. Always nice to see a Cornell guy from my year make good.

Here are your top priorities:
1. Speed up the game so women and children can identify with it.
2. Maintain your focus on labor peace and competitive balance.

3. Keep your eyes on the future while remembering the power of tradition.
4. Act as if baseball is in the entertainment business.


Specifically, to speed up the game and make it more interesting:
1. Enforce the 20-second rule between pitches with no one on base. That will eliminate all the apparel repositioning that sandbags the action and does nothing to build drama.
2. Instruct umpires not to allow batters to exit the batter's box unless they're hurt. That means pitchers can work fast and batters can't stop them.
3. Pass a rule that bans the replacement of a pitcher in his first inning of work unless he has allowed a run. Mid-inning pitching changes suck the life out of the game in the late innings, just as it should be getting exciting.
4. Speed up instant replay. It's saved time by eliminating most arguments. Its execution, though imperfect, has exceeded expectation. Keep tweaking it so that reviews don't take three minutes.


Then:

• Continue to expand alternative media so that young fans can plug in on any device and revenues can be distributed equally.
• Find a way for the A's to move into the Valley. No other franchise has been held hostage to a dying city like they have.
• Hitch your wagon to Mike Trout, Clayton Kershaw, Giancarlo Stanton and Andrew McCutcheon. The four best players -- or at least young players -- in the game are Americans, and they're all humble, mature, articulate and charismatic. Throw in Yasiel Puig, Bryce Harper and King Felix. Sell them! People will buy.
• Alter the schedule so early April games are played in warm weather cities and inside domes. 
• Get some doubleheaders into the schedule and move up the playoffs to prevent the abomination of flurries and freezing rain on World Series games.
• Pardon Pete Rose. It's time. He's paid his debt. While you're at it, pardon Joe Jackson too. 

 Do all that and you'll be the best commish ever. Go Big (Manf)Red.

86 the 96!

Been spending a lot of the last two weeks avoiding exposure to Winter Olympics coverage.  I can't stomach the needless nationalism that dominates our view of the Olympica, as if the ability of some 19-year-old from Vermont to ski down a hill fast demonstrates U.S. superiority over Sweden.

This time of year, I'm focused on pitchers and catchers, of course, and college hoops. The NCAA tournament -- and its lead-up -- are a particularly exciting time if you come from places like Albany, NY and Charleston, S.C., rooting for hometown teams like College of Charleston, Siena, Coastal Carolina, Cornell, and, for no apparent reason, Indiana University-Purdue University-Indianapolis, commonly known as IUPUI, which is pronounced "Oo-wee-poo-wee."

Gaining steam these days in college basketball circles is a horrifying idea. Jim Boeheim, the under-appreciated Syracuse coach, has been lobbying for several years to vastly expand the NCAA tournament to 96 teams. Boeheim wants to turn college basketball into the NBA or NHL, which is to say, make it totally irrelevant.

From a coach's perspective, this makes perfect short-term sense. He loves his kids, they work hard, they are among the best in the world, and he wants them to have an opportunity to dance at the big ball. (This year, of course, this isn't an issue for the Orange, who are #1 seed contenders. But his squad has come up short in recent years.) And Boeheim has the ear of the movers and shakers of NCAA basketball. This is worrisome, because Boeheim's proposal would literally ruin the game.

Imagine if every team that now plays in the NIT were to join the NCAA. Entire BCS conferences would pass into the tournament. Yawn. Say goodbye to the winner-take-all excitement of most league tournaments. ZZZzzzz. It would suck the prestige out of earning a berth for mid-majors and small conferences. Really, how special is a tournament invitation when a quarter of all teams get one? From the fans' perspective, it would destroy the regular season, render many conference tournaments lame and add nothing to the NCAA tournament.

All this is an object lesson for Major League Baseball. It must resist the misguided and nearsighted forces hankering for expanded playoffs and keep the regular season meaningful. It must maintain the credibility of a playoff spot, which could be sorely tested even with the current alignment if the AL Central delivers four .500 teams this year. It must maintain its slim purchase on the remaining sliver of integrity connected to the pennant race.

Bud, beware the Boeheims! 86 the 96!