All sports have rules. Rules are meant to keep order and stability and ensure safety among players. I have been thinking lately about some rules that need changing in a few sports, and here's what I got:
The designated hitter in baseball is beyond moronic. I find it amazing that a guy can have a 15-year baseball career and never own a mitt. If you are going to allow the designated hitter, you should also allow the designated fielder, someone other than the pitcher that can play the field but does not have to put a bat in his hands. Think of all the great glove/poor hitting shortstops that would still be playing today.
Also in baseball, I think that if a pitcher hits a guy, he should be forced to lead off the next inning.
The ground-rule double should be modified. It is pretty impressive to make a ball bounce out of a major-league stadium — almost as hard as driving it out of the stadium on a straight line. There is a fielder involved too, so maybe a ground-rule double could count as a run after all. The outfielder chasing it might get on his horse and chase it a little faster if he knows that the runner isn't going to pull up satisfied at second base.
I say let the batter keep running. If the fielder chooses, he can climb the wall and try to get the ball like when we were kids. He could act like he can't find the ball and then gun the guy out at home plate. That would be exciting.
Pitchers and opposing teams can no longer get upset if a guy drops a slow trot after a home run. You should be much more upset that you just gave up a home run. Why are you paying attention to the way a guy runs anyhow?
In the NBA, no more hand-check fouls can be called, especially if the refs are going to continue the beatings that go on under the boards every night. Why don't refs ever call a foul on a 3-pointer? At least two dozen times this year I have seen a guy launch a 3, and the defender runs into him and he falls backward onto the floor. That is a foul. Call it.
How about on the weekends, no goaltending? That would be awesome. You roll into a Laker game with your kid one Sunday and half the team leaves with 15 blocks. Lakers win 22-9.
In tennis, if your opponent is seeded much higher than you, you should be able to use the doubles alleys. This would at least keep the matches a little closer.
For women's tennis, underwear should be optional.
Let's do away with offsides in hockey. If an alley-oop is good enough for basketball, then why not for hockey? Scoring (thus interest) would go up if you could shoot a pass across two blue lines to your teammate, who is cherry-picking down by the other net. I turn offsides off when I play hockey on Playstation. Let's have commissioner Gary Bettman turn it off for good.
Also in hockey, if two guys start fighting, play should continue. Why stop an entire game just so two goons can mash each other? I would like to see the smaller guys have to skate around the brawl and navigate the puck around some elbows and fists. Also, if you fight in hockey, you no longer will have to go to the penalty box. You should have to stay on the ice for as long as the penalty minutes would have been. Those would be some tired goons out there skating around. Imagine fighting for two straight minutes and then having to continue skating and playing playoff hockey for an additional five! The guy would be in slow motion.
In the NFL, I think we can all agree that we need to stop calling timeouts from the sidelines to "ice" a kicker. Keep the timeouts on the field where they belong. Come to think of it, let's get rid of kickers entirely. Keep field goals, punts and kickoffs, but they have to be performed by a first-string player at another position. (Brian Urlacher could do it). Maybe the other team could decide beforehand who they want kicking the ball. More teams would go for it on fourth-and-one if the alternative was Warren Sapp punting into the wind.
I have always hated the too-many-men-on-the-field penalty. If you can figure out a way to sneak 14 guys out of your huddle, more power to you.
There are lots of ways to make all the games we love more enjoyable. These are just a few recommendations I have. I would love to hear yours.
Best of lucky,
jay mohr
http://msn.foxsports.com/other/story/7686942
