MLB Needs To Implement A March Madness Style Opening Weekend, Not This Current Shit

Okay so Carl broke down this morning how MLB sucks at marketing their product.  It’s honestly maddening how bad it has gotten

And I want to cherry pick off that a little bit.  Let’s first talk about how Ichiro Sizuki, one of the very best pure hitters in baseball history, not just MLB history, signed a 1 year contract worth $750K this offseason to play with the Mariners at 45 years old…

and was pulled from the game to a standing ovation in front of his home country, the Mariners and his longtime rivals, the Oakland Athletics.

108,000 people saw this tweet.  That is PEANUTS on the internet.  Sure there are time changes and shit but this isn’t even a news story when it should be a pretty historic moment in the game’s history.  I mean, it’s only professional baseball’s all time hits leader going back to where it all started for him about 30 years earlier in what is probably the last series of his career.  Disgusting that this wasn’t a bigger deal, and it’s all MLB’s fault.  They don’t allow it’s consumers to share their product whatsoever unless they’re sharing it from MLB endorsed accounts.  That’s just such an ass backwards way to promote in the digital age.  There’s a reason why the NBA is the most widely consumed network sport on earth, it’s because they WANT people sharing and promoting their product for them, and for FREE.  It’s FREE MARKETING.

But I digress.  That’s not what I really want to talk about in this blog.  At least not really.  What I am proposing is MLB use NCAA March Madness style for opening day.

Look, baseball is America’s pastime.  When you boil off all the bullshit involved in it with the cheating scandals, steroids, segregation, etc., it’s a beautiful, artistic game.  And opening day should be a holiday celebrated by everyone not only in our country, but in Japan, the Caribbean and South America too.

So why not stagger games similar to March Madness?  Get all 30 teams and all 15 games televised every 2 hours or so on shit like TruTV, TBS, FOX and ESPN 1 through however many ESPN channels there currently are.  Ya know, get EYE BALLS ON EYE BALLS on your product.  Start the first series in Japan so there’s a game on bright and early then run em all day long for three days straight over an entire weekend.  Maybe even make an actual kickoff tournament where all 30 teams are involved in single elimination play or some shit.

Now that might be taking it too far, but think about how the NCAA tournament draws people who haven’t watched a single college basketball game into March Madness with their bracket pools.  It’s the talk of every single office across the country for the duration of the entire tournament.  And now that gambling is on a beeline to becoming legal, it’s even more reason for them to figure something out that is NOT the current status quo.

But instead there will be a few nationally televised games, none of which include Mike Trout and his historically good statistics because MLB sucks at promoting its stars, but instead it’ll be the same 4-5 teams we always see and the topic of conversation will be how LOOGYs are the bane of millenials’ existence.  Just so, so bad.

There is more talent in baseball right now than ever before.  But the average joe doesn’t know who Max Scherzer is and that he’s going to be gunning for his 4th Cy Young or that Matt Chapman is one of the very best all around players in baseball.   It’s bananaland to me and I’m sick of it.