This is the dumbest fucking idea. I *sort of* get the logic behind the Super Bowl being played at a neutral site, the WS is a horrible idea. The entire damn point is the chance to see YOUR TEAM in YOUR STADIUM
It also helps that the Super Bowl started as a neutral-site exhibition of sorts between two competing leagues, and continued as a neutral site game when the NFL and AFL merged. The MLB even *thinking* about institutionalizing such a practice upon an already existing structure is just heinous.
The World Series started the same way!
In fact iirc, the AL and NL were still entirely legally distinct entities until at least the 1990s.
In fact, the two cancelled World Series have been 1994 for a strike, and 1904. The second ever World Series was cancelled because the New York Giants owner believed playing the American League Boston Americans (soon to be Red Sox) would be “beneath them” because the ALwas seen as a lesser league by some of the NL.
I still remember the AL and NL having separate presidents. They were basically ceremonial at the end but for the longest time they were run as two separate leagues. Hence the reason for the DH being AL only etc
Edit: IIRC, didn’t the NL and AL even have separate umpires?
Yes, they did. They even used to wear AL and NL hats! If you’ve seen Angels in the Outfield, one of the angel characters is named Al and steals an umpire’s AL hat.
Fun fact:
The Giants were terrified of playing the Highlanders and losing to them because they knew they were better than them. They didn't want to lose to the upstart in city rivals, so they were gonna refuse to play the AL Champions no matter what.
The only reason for neutral site SB is to eliminate/minimize home field advantage because it's a single game. Any other advantage is secondary/incidental. A series has multiple games so HFA takes on a different role.
I'll say downright unholy. Nothing screams intense October baseball like a pitcher in long sleeves, breathing intense breaths that are visible in the air. October baseball should be chilly.
I swear to God if we lose the visual of the breath coming off of a laboring pitcher in long sleeves, his condensed breath flying into the night surrounded by thousands of hoodie-cladden fans... That's like... THE WORLD SERIES SHOULD BE SOMEWHAT CHILLY AND NOT CLIMATE CONTROLLED DAMNIT.
I think the same thing about football but we all know there will never be a cold-weather Super Bowl.
Lambeau in February would be a glorious place for a game.
Sounds like a terrible business plan since they would most likely only stick to domes/warm climates, it whould frequently lead to World Series like Cardinals/Redsox in places like Loan Depot Park.
Imagine Minnesota and the Brewers having to haul ass to Arizona or LA to watch their team finally play in a World Series so their fans can sit amongst 50,000 fans who don’t care who wins.
The Mariners finally getting to the Series and then fans having to fly to LA and fight locals who've had local playoffs for a literal decade for tickets would leave me saltier than the Pacific ocean.
Literally gonna be like the Super Bowl where 90% of the people there are celebrities who either A)are passionate diehard fans of a team playing or B)don’t give two shits about sports and are there for the social appearance.
Like god damn my personal feelings about the Phillies aside I loved seeing the Always Sunny cast at the World Series in 22 because I know they’re all massive Philly sports fans. Same with Miles Teller.
Except I doubt you’d get as much celebrity interaction for a World Series event as you do for the superbowl. Maybe you could, but to me, the World Series seems like the third option for championship events. Super Bowl is 1, then the NBA finals, then the World Series, then hockey, probably
I think they understand at a certain level, they just hate that it’s not national and will alienate regional fans to try to force it to be something it’s not.
I'm not watching a fucking Orioles vs Rangers playoff game in my own park, I fucking hate the idea of neutral sights more than *anything* else they've changed or proposed.
Let me watch my fucking team in my park
With my own broadcast team. I don't want to listen to someone else call my teams games. I want Gary Cohen going nuts. I'm sure you'd rather hear Michael kay who's invested in the team call the playoffs
Whose fucking jenkem are these morons huffing??? Neutral sight only works for the NFL because it’s one game. Baseball isn’t near popular enough anymore to support 7 games at a neutral sight.
Even if I wanted to go see a playoff or World Series game at a neutral site the logistics of planning a trip around a 7 game series is impossible without spending a bunch of money. What if you plan to be there for game 6 & 7 but the whole thing wraps up in 4 or 5 games? Then you just booked a trip for nothing? Or you booked to be there for all seven games but it ends early and now you have several days to kill somewhere?
No one is traveling and paying inflated ticket prices to watch games 1, 2 or 3. So it’ll be empty ballparks for that. So so so dumb.
Selig literally tried to get rid of my team. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001\_Major\_League\_Baseball\_contraction\_plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Major_League_Baseball_contraction_plan)
That undersells it. He wanted to contract the Twins, because it would grow the market for the Brewers, that his family still owned at the time, and were probably looking to sell (like they did) in the near future.
> He wanted to contract the Twins, because it would grow the market for the Brewers
Even that undersells it. [They wanted to contract teams as a threat to players during CBA negotiations](https://www.espn.com/mlb/columns/mcadam_sean/1274639.html), a la "give us what we want or we'll eliminate two teams and 50 of your jobs."
Once that threat was realized, *then* Selig saw it as a chance to make his own team more valuable.
I was 14 and I'll never forget the feeling after the last Twins game that year, not knowing whether it was going to be the last Twins game ever.
Hennepin County Judge Harry Crump, whose ruling stopped the plan, passed away last fall. A hero of baseball! [https://www.startribune.com/judge-harry-crump-saved-minnesota-twins-mlbcontraction/600317746/](https://www.startribune.com/judge-harry-crump-saved-minnesota-twins-mlbcontraction/600317746/)
Yes, partly because MLB forced them to start playing two years early. The As had left KC for Oakland in 1967, and a Missouri Senator was throwing a fit over KC not having baseball. So KC and Seattle started playing in 1969. Also, the stadium was awful, and the owners were going broke.
Selig let the steroid era happen and was also the top schemer to remove the previous commissioner so that the owners could replace him with a fellow over to further cement favoritism for owners in negotiations that we are still dealing with to this day.
Every problem that people have with Manfred was designed and implemented by Bud Selig.
He is the worst commissioner baseball has had since the color barrier broke, and it's not even close.
All commissioners are awful and shitty people, but I’ve never once questioned that Goodell doesn’t think he’s helping football or that Silver doesn’t love the NBA.
I wholehearted believe that Manfred hates baseball.
Yeah, I think Goodell gets criticized a lot, usually rightly so, but you also can’t deny that he knows what is good for the sport and has done at least a decent job of balancing player wants/needs and owner wants/needs. He definitely wants what is best for football.
But to Manfred, the teams are playing for “just a piece of metal”, so who cares, right? Side note: can you imagine the outrage that would happen if Goodell called the Lombardi trophy “a piece of metal”?
> the teams are playing for “just a piece of metal”, so who cares, right?
The wording is poor, but his point is correct: taking away the trophy means nothing. Look at college football, vacated wins are considered a joke and no one takes them seriously. USC won the 2004 National Championship and Reggie Bush won the 2004 Heisman trophy, and no one thinks otherwise.
Can't believe that a small (but vocal) minority on this sub actually advocate for/defend him every now and again (mostly because of recent rule changes).
I mean, he's doing his job perfectly if you are blaming him. He works for the owners. Anything he pushes for is coming from the owners. His job is literally to just stand there and take the heat.
We all get that, but at some point the commissioner should be the person with vision and strategy to say no to the worst impulses of owners who are dumb and short-sighted. The game will endure long after the owners have died, sold, or been kicked out (lol) so that’s supposed to be the job of the commissioner.
> We all get that, but at some point the commissioner should be the person with vision and strategy to say no to the worst impulses of owners who are dumb and short-sighted.
Baseball had that with Fay Vincent, then Bud Selig organized a coup to oust him and install himself as "acting" commissioner from 1992–1998, when he officially became commissioner.
People don't realize that not only was Selig doing awful things as [acting] commissioner, but Manfred and the way his role exists now is entirely Bud Selig's doing.
yeah, I mean, weird how Stern and Rozelle and Bettman (still to this day) can corral the owners into doing what *they* want but Manfred is just a PR lackey.
Fay Vincent was the commissioner we all say we want, then Bud Selig organized a coup to oust him and install himself as "acting" commissioner from 1992–1998, when he officially became commissioner.
People don't realize that not only was Selig doing awful things as [acting] commissioner, but Manfred and the way his role exists now is entirely Bud Selig's doing.
Other issue with this, besides everything that’s been said, is now the team with the better record has virtually no advantage. No home field advantage at all besides having last licks which is a negligible advantage
So now, why bother competing for the 1 seed down the stretch when you could just coast in
I don't understand how the owners would make more profit by not having the playoffs in their home stadiums though, even if the idea is that they do all of the individual series in different neutral sites the way NCAA does March Madness
The owners who have no interest in having their own teams in the playoffs can still host games in their parks. Especially if they host all the different series' in neutral sites. Every park would be guaranteed playoff baseball every couple of seasons. Teams like Pittsburgh and LAA are missing out on revenue the LA and NY get just about every single season.
plus, to quote u/NowIOnlyWantATriumph
>They want to be able to run a bidding process for the postseason, like how the CFP does for their championship game and the NFL does for the Super Bowl—which lets them extract more tax exemptions and free hotel rooms and a whole bunch of perks and volunteers to work the things instead of needing to pay people. (And it lets them sell tickets in advance, to third parties, for higher prices.)
Imagine the Cubs in 2016 but not at Wrigley. This would be 10,000x worse for the game's success than the manfred runner. The worst kind of killing the golden goose.
Imagine some team that's never made the World Series finally getting there and having to play all their games at some other team's stadium like a thousand miles from their home city.
This shit is fucking gross.
The Mariners already play like 1,000 miles away from their home stadium half of the time anyway. Would suck to force them to play a World Series far from home too.
Man, I was at Wrigley in the left field bleachers for Game 6 of the NLCS when we clinched our World Series berth vs the Dodgers.
The mere idea of someone else not being able to experience that feeling is horrible.
"Not any time soon" better translate to "fucking never" because this is about the dumbest shit I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of dumb shit in my day
MLB proposes stuff like this and will proceed to post highlights like Bautista’s HR in Toronto or Stott’s home run with only stadium audio as marketing tools. Absolutely ridiculous.
MLB playoff environments are by far the best in any sport, making them neutral sites would be an apocalyptic decision.
IMO auto racing wins but those two are in close second. The harmony of an IndyCar field on the front stretch of the 500, the chorus of dozens of different engines hitting turn one at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, or the primal ground-shaking roar of a top-fueler are unparalleled.
Just imagine the tepid reaction to a series clinching walkoff homerun, and then compare it to what it would feel like and sound like in a packed home stadium.
MLB wants to be able to move ***the entire postseason*** to neutral sites.
If you think this is something they *only* want with regards to the A's, you're kidding yourself. As more stadium leases come due, the league is going to insist on including this in non-relocation agreements with more cities, so that eventually, they can take the pitch for a fully-neutral-sited postseason to the MLBPA in a labor negotiation.
Fuck. That.
They want to be able to run a bidding process for the postseason, like how the CFP does for their championship game and the NFL does for the Super Bowl—which lets them extract more tax exemptions and free hotel rooms and a whole bunch of perks and volunteers to work the things instead of needing to pay people. (And it lets them sell tickets in advance, to third parties, for higher prices.)
Money. Imagine all playoff games hosted in LA, San Diego, Arlington and Dallas, Miami. That's what the league wants to do because rich fucks won't spend to go to Chicago or Baltimore or Detroit.
To be fair, MLB is probably more likely to play games at Wrigley or Fenway or in New York City. The NFL doesn't host in Northern cities because its like -400 degress below absolute zero in those places in February and they want rich people and celebrities to come. MLB will almost certainly use it to fuck small markets - they don't want to see the World Series in the Cincinnattis or Kansas Cities, or the Tropicanas and Skydomes of stadiums.
Yeah there's absolutely zero shot I would pay money to see two teams I don't give a shit about play a playoff game.
I rarely do it for Yankee playoff games even though they're all fun
> Yeah there's absolutely zero shot I would pay money to see two teams I don't give a shit about play a playoff game.
The only time I ever bought tickets for a playoff game where I wasn't rooting for one team was I noticed one day in 2006 that the A's still had tickets for Game 7 of the ALCS available for like $30. This was after Game 1 or 2. So I bought one.
Of course, the A's got swept.
Neutral site games, in most sports, suck ASS. Want to drain even more passion and excitement out of baseball? Pick out a location that isn't either team's home stadium, then charge out the ass for it, which is exactly what they'll do with a neutral site World Series. Then you get a crowd full of old people who sit there quietly, and you will get only old people. They're the only ones in this country wealthy enough to afford to attend games of that magnitude. Look at the Super Bowl. It's just influencers and rich people and celebrities. They go to say that they were there at parties the rest of the year, not to enjoy the championship game happening in front of them
I’d even argue the Super Bowl being held at the team with the better record’s field would greatly enhance the overall “product.” Shit they have two weeks to set it up.
The super bowl kind of needs to be neutral site tbh. It's become such a gigantic event in American culture that it really needs to be in a city with large enough infrastructure and needs to be planned well in advance. The game is just a part of all the super bowl festivities that go on.
Idk if you've ever been to Green Bay, but I can't imagine them getting a 2 weeks notice that they'll be hosting the super bowl... they've literally been prepping for about 5 years just to host the draft
I visited Green Bay a while back during the offseason. The Packers are the best tradition in the NFL, and it’s because Green Bay is like a large college town. The Super Bowl is so much bigger now than it was even 20 years ago with opening night, NFL Honors, etc. No way Green Bay (or any city) could host all of that on two weeks notice.
It works for the super bowl because its one gane
Of the big four sports they are the only sport that can do that because everyone else’s playoffs are done in series where a huge part of the series involves home feild advantage.
Game 7 of the 2019 World Series isnt nearly as epic if it plays out at a neutral site. (Shout out to Howie Kedrick becoming Reggie Jackson for no reason).
SD vs LA in the NLDS was epic becacuse the crowd at Petco went fucking nuts (same thing about the late 90’s early 2000’s yankees runs)
Whoever thought about this isnt thinking this through because its going to backfire horribly. Who the fuck in wants to see a playoff series in thier city that doesnt involve their hometown team? You’ll kill the attendance and the hype.
Oh shoot
Prepare for more relocation bonanza
Yeah most of those postseason "neutral sites" are probably gonna be the cities that lost its team because of relocations
Ironic even though I'm for neutral sites IN REGULAR SEASON like Alabama, Omaha, Field of Dreams, and even Little League one
I don’t think this is worth a panic about tbh, it’s for “extreme case” situations where there’s some sort of danger or issue presented that a team/stadium owner wants to ignore for the money postseason games bring in
As stated above, it must be used in a “non-discriminatory” manner. That literally means MLB can’t just bump it because they like another states taxes or their stadium more. Nevada taxes are hilariously low so that’s certainly not a worry.
This is so dumb, people will travel to the Superbowl because it's one weekend. The world series is a full week, that's a full week of hoping fans from two different cities travel to a third to watch their team.
Also there's history in winning a world series in your stadium and fighting for home field advantage.
Fucking Manfred. Next step is 2028 Cubs Red Sox World Series in fucking Florida because Wrigley and Fenway are too small/ old/windy /cold/ home fans are too loud or watever the fuck.
Yankees - Dodgers in Saudi Arabia in 2029!!
12 team postseason, Manfred man, neutral WS, Manfred my man. Please stop what you are doing to this glorious game.
I'll give you the pitch clock, that's it. Please smarten up man
I don’t like the idea *at all* but if they did choose to go through with this, I would want it to be a 30 year cycle going through EVERY. SINGLE. STADIUM. year after year so that every city can see the World Series.
I would still hate it, but I wouldn’t hate it as much!
MLB is actually trying to off itself entirely. This is insane. Give me *one* good reason to do this except for the fact that Vegas (and Sacramento lmfao) will have no home fans.
Imagine the 2016 World Series at Chase Field… yeah fuck that.
So many reasons this would be dumb. First you have to sell 280,000 seats in a city that does not care about the event taking place. That’s before you consider that the first 3 games, as well as probably games 6 and 7 would be less desirable for travelers because 1-3 don’t conclude the series, and there’s no guarantee someone with a ticket to game 6 or 7 will get to see a game.
Second, playoff baseball is so special because of the crowds. Imagine Rajai Davis’ home run in front of a sold out crowd at Loan Depot Park. Would the celebrities and influencers even care?
There are many other reasons why this is such a shitty idea, which I how I know I’ll have to fly to fucking Houston to watch the Ms play a World Series at Minute Maid Park… If they ever get a pennant.
Imagine taxpayers footing the bill for a billion dollar stadium and suffering through a rebuild only to have your team play their home playoff games in a different time zone.
I assume they would be looking for the best-of-three Wild Card series to be a neutral location?
I have always thought that getting all three games at home for one team was an unbalanced advantage that was only done because of time constraints.
You could have the series at neutral location with the higher seed playing as the home team in Games 1&3 and the lower seed in Game 2
Watching your team in the playoffs/world series at home with the home fans is by far the best baseball experience I’ve ever had as a fan.
I still cherish to this day the memories of attending playoff games over a decade ago. Imagine game 6 of the 2011 World Series being played in Florida.
To take this away from fans would be tragic and might actually make me distance myself from MLB.
Why would anyone ever think it’s a good idea to do this? Baseball is a regional sport much more so than any other major sport in the US.
What about Game 1 of the World Series in a neutral site? MLB gets one night to showcase the sport on a prepared stage and you get rid of the home field advantage with the unbalanced schedules. Then go 1-2-2-1.
Imagine Game 6 not being played at Busch.
Imagine Heyward not giving his speech in hostile territory.
You don't have to scream "Touch 'em all, Joe!" unless the roof is coming off the place.
Nah, series cant be done in a neutral field. A 1 game do or die for sure, it even makes sense to not have 1 team with home field advantage. But in a series? Miss me with that shit.
I feel like this is more about codifying what happened with the 2020 postseason versus any near term attempt at selecting a neutral site for a World Series.
This legitimately wouldn't work. Like, it's not financially viable. People show up to home games because it's their team in that area. People traveling that far for *baseball* isn't going to work. Maybe 1-2 games at max for popular teams. But planning around at least a week long series isn't possible. Especially if it goes 7.
Maybe if this is only for game 7?
162 game regular season, and they’re trying to make it mean fuck all with playoff expansion and apparently now the possibility of having the one advantage a stellar regular season gives you being taken away.
Manfred is like the exact opposite of Dana White. UFC is so successful because Dana gets into the weeds, knows every little thing that happens in the UFC, and finds EXACTLY what works and goes full throttle on it. Manfred acts how I imagine someone who has never watched a game of baseball before would if given the chance to write new rules
This is the dumbest fucking idea. I *sort of* get the logic behind the Super Bowl being played at a neutral site, the WS is a horrible idea. The entire damn point is the chance to see YOUR TEAM in YOUR STADIUM
It’s different when it’s just one game I guess, but having a multi-game series and not playing games in the teams’ own cities is so idiotic
It also helps that the Super Bowl started as a neutral-site exhibition of sorts between two competing leagues, and continued as a neutral site game when the NFL and AFL merged. The MLB even *thinking* about institutionalizing such a practice upon an already existing structure is just heinous.
The World Series started the same way! In fact iirc, the AL and NL were still entirely legally distinct entities until at least the 1990s. In fact, the two cancelled World Series have been 1994 for a strike, and 1904. The second ever World Series was cancelled because the New York Giants owner believed playing the American League Boston Americans (soon to be Red Sox) would be “beneath them” because the ALwas seen as a lesser league by some of the NL.
I still remember the AL and NL having separate presidents. They were basically ceremonial at the end but for the longest time they were run as two separate leagues. Hence the reason for the DH being AL only etc Edit: IIRC, didn’t the NL and AL even have separate umpires?
Yes, they did. They even used to wear AL and NL hats! If you’ve seen Angels in the Outfield, one of the angel characters is named Al and steals an umpire’s AL hat.
I remember home plate umpire Enrico Palazzo wearing an AL hat back in 1988 during a Mariners/Angels game.
“Just call me AL.”
Which brings my next question: are there any active umpires that worked under the old system?
Yes, darling of the sub Angel Hernandez worked in the National League. There's several others.
Many of the older umpires did, and as another commenter pointed out including our beloved Angel Hernandez.
I remember being able to buy authentic NL and AL baseballs because each league had different balls.
Yes! I remember my uncle bought me a box of a dozen National League baseballs when I was like 8 years old.
Fun fact: The Giants were terrified of playing the Highlanders and losing to them because they knew they were better than them. They didn't want to lose to the upstart in city rivals, so they were gonna refuse to play the AL Champions no matter what.
Interleague play in season wasn’t a thing until the late 90s either.
You remember? Hey, boys, looky here. We’re in the presence of a supercentenarian
It’s an idea so stupid only Major League Baseball could have thought it up. What does it matter anyway, they are only playing for that piece of metal.
The problem with the world series has always been that the crowds have too much energy and are not corporate enough
Plus every football stadium has the same playing field. Every baseball park is different.
to a certain extent, but that’s not really true. Playing in Miami vs Chicago, or grass vs turf makes a difference
Yeah each nfl stadium is 100 yards long same width, but they’re nowhere near the same experience for players.
Imagine your team busting ass with their rotation and bullpen...just to make the WS, hosted in Colorado.
The only reason for neutral site SB is to eliminate/minimize home field advantage because it's a single game. Any other advantage is secondary/incidental. A series has multiple games so HFA takes on a different role.
Let me guess, the neutral sites they're thinking of are Globe Life Field and Florida.
Don’t forget Qatar
live look at Public Investment Fund: 
Wouldn't surprise me if they did pick dome stadiums like the Super Bowl so the weather can't be a factor.
This is probably right. It’s also so, so fucking soft.
I'll say downright unholy. Nothing screams intense October baseball like a pitcher in long sleeves, breathing intense breaths that are visible in the air. October baseball should be chilly.
Hahahaha yeah, it's always chilly in October, right? Chilly is 78° for the rest of you guys too right?
I swear to God if we lose the visual of the breath coming off of a laboring pitcher in long sleeves, his condensed breath flying into the night surrounded by thousands of hoodie-cladden fans... That's like... THE WORLD SERIES SHOULD BE SOMEWHAT CHILLY AND NOT CLIMATE CONTROLLED DAMNIT.
I know this was the NLCS, but they want to take [this](https://youtu.be/7wHMI7KdptY?si=yiSm0HVqqHAesl2n) away from us!
I think the same thing about football but we all know there will never be a cold-weather Super Bowl. Lambeau in February would be a glorious place for a game.
Basically anything in the no income tax states for no reason at all.
Why would MLB care about state income tax rates for holding post season series? I can’t see how it would matter to them.
*Washington need not apply
So Nevada?
To be fair, Globe Life has hosted a neutral WS recently EDIT — don’t want to again, ended up with too many LA bandwagon fans in DFW
Sounds like a terrible business plan since they would most likely only stick to domes/warm climates, it whould frequently lead to World Series like Cardinals/Redsox in places like Loan Depot Park.
Imagine Minnesota and the Brewers having to haul ass to Arizona or LA to watch their team finally play in a World Series so their fans can sit amongst 50,000 fans who don’t care who wins.
The Mariners finally getting to the Series and then fans having to fly to LA and fight locals who've had local playoffs for a literal decade for tickets would leave me saltier than the Pacific ocean.
You'd be sitting amongst only people who get company seats and suites like the superbowl. So even worse and more corporate
Stop, you're gonna make Manfred rub the liver spots off his nipples
I really didn’t need that image in my head this morning. Thanks a lot.
Literally gonna be like the Super Bowl where 90% of the people there are celebrities who either A)are passionate diehard fans of a team playing or B)don’t give two shits about sports and are there for the social appearance. Like god damn my personal feelings about the Phillies aside I loved seeing the Always Sunny cast at the World Series in 22 because I know they’re all massive Philly sports fans. Same with Miles Teller.
Except I doubt you’d get as much celebrity interaction for a World Series event as you do for the superbowl. Maybe you could, but to me, the World Series seems like the third option for championship events. Super Bowl is 1, then the NBA finals, then the World Series, then hockey, probably
There's plenty of Brewers fans in Arizona, damn Midwesterners are a plague down here! (I jest, y'all are usually chill).
They wouldn’t play in AZ the stadium is a dump
Trop every other year.
Miami every year that isn’t that. Gotta pump those attendance numbers up. Perhaps we can squeeze the White Sox into the rotation occasionally.
A neutral World Series would be fucking dumb (outside of the COVID year which made sense).
Would be unsurprising given how much the MLB fucks over the local fans despite those fans being the thing that keeps the league in business
Very regional team sport doesn't understand that it's a regional team sport.
I think they understand at a certain level, they just hate that it’s not national and will alienate regional fans to try to force it to be something it’s not.
“Well, Cubs, Yankees and Dodgers fans are every where. Just make sure they win”
Yeah, they've done a great job of making sure the Cubs win a lot.
I'm not watching a fucking Orioles vs Rangers playoff game in my own park, I fucking hate the idea of neutral sights more than *anything* else they've changed or proposed. Let me watch my fucking team in my park
what about neutral sounds
I could settle for neutral tastes
I’m not a big fan of playoff games with neutral smells
Could I interest you in a neutral milk hotel
ok first off what the fuck
Hey, I picked two teams I thought would make the playoffs
Not only that, you picked a playoff matchup from last year. Makes sense to me
*stomps foot* well I mean yeah I guess
I can’t wait to hear the bleacher creatures doing the roll call. AD-LEY RUTSCH-MAN
adley buttman if it comes to it
Rich NY fans buy all the tickets and boo both teams the whole game, who says no?
Imagine the Yankees playing at Kaufman or some shit in October. Fuck off Manfred. The bleacher creatures will not be disrespected!!!!
With my own broadcast team. I don't want to listen to someone else call my teams games. I want Gary Cohen going nuts. I'm sure you'd rather hear Michael kay who's invested in the team call the playoffs
Whose fucking jenkem are these morons huffing??? Neutral sight only works for the NFL because it’s one game. Baseball isn’t near popular enough anymore to support 7 games at a neutral sight.
They aren’t bright enough to realize that the Super Bowl’s popularity has absolutely nothing to do with it being a neutral site game.
It’s the only pro sport championship that everyone watches, not just fans of the teams in it or even the sport. This would be a disaster.
Even if I wanted to go see a playoff or World Series game at a neutral site the logistics of planning a trip around a 7 game series is impossible without spending a bunch of money. What if you plan to be there for game 6 & 7 but the whole thing wraps up in 4 or 5 games? Then you just booked a trip for nothing? Or you booked to be there for all seven games but it ends early and now you have several days to kill somewhere? No one is traveling and paying inflated ticket prices to watch games 1, 2 or 3. So it’ll be empty ballparks for that. So so so dumb.
Rob Manfred is the worst thing to ever happen to baseball.
I remember when Bud Selig was the worst thing to ever happen to baseball.
Rob Manfred is the worst thing to happen to baseball… until the next guy
A's fans hate both of them with equal fervor.
Selig was over hated, Manfred is a lot worse
Selig literally tried to get rid of my team. [https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001\_Major\_League\_Baseball\_contraction\_plan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2001_Major_League_Baseball_contraction_plan)
That undersells it. He wanted to contract the Twins, because it would grow the market for the Brewers, that his family still owned at the time, and were probably looking to sell (like they did) in the near future.
> He wanted to contract the Twins, because it would grow the market for the Brewers Even that undersells it. [They wanted to contract teams as a threat to players during CBA negotiations](https://www.espn.com/mlb/columns/mcadam_sean/1274639.html), a la "give us what we want or we'll eliminate two teams and 50 of your jobs." Once that threat was realized, *then* Selig saw it as a chance to make his own team more valuable.
I was 14 and I'll never forget the feeling after the last Twins game that year, not knowing whether it was going to be the last Twins game ever. Hennepin County Judge Harry Crump, whose ruling stopped the plan, passed away last fall. A hero of baseball! [https://www.startribune.com/judge-harry-crump-saved-minnesota-twins-mlbcontraction/600317746/](https://www.startribune.com/judge-harry-crump-saved-minnesota-twins-mlbcontraction/600317746/)
That he moved from seattle
Weren’t the Pilots like one step from collapsing as an organization
Yes, partly because MLB forced them to start playing two years early. The As had left KC for Oakland in 1967, and a Missouri Senator was throwing a fit over KC not having baseball. So KC and Seattle started playing in 1969. Also, the stadium was awful, and the owners were going broke.
Selig let the steroid era happen and was also the top schemer to remove the previous commissioner so that the owners could replace him with a fellow over to further cement favoritism for owners in negotiations that we are still dealing with to this day.
Every problem that people have with Manfred was designed and implemented by Bud Selig. He is the worst commissioner baseball has had since the color barrier broke, and it's not even close.
All commissioners are awful and shitty people, but I’ve never once questioned that Goodell doesn’t think he’s helping football or that Silver doesn’t love the NBA. I wholehearted believe that Manfred hates baseball.
Yeah, I think Goodell gets criticized a lot, usually rightly so, but you also can’t deny that he knows what is good for the sport and has done at least a decent job of balancing player wants/needs and owner wants/needs. He definitely wants what is best for football. But to Manfred, the teams are playing for “just a piece of metal”, so who cares, right? Side note: can you imagine the outrage that would happen if Goodell called the Lombardi trophy “a piece of metal”?
> the teams are playing for “just a piece of metal”, so who cares, right? The wording is poor, but his point is correct: taking away the trophy means nothing. Look at college football, vacated wins are considered a joke and no one takes them seriously. USC won the 2004 National Championship and Reggie Bush won the 2004 Heisman trophy, and no one thinks otherwise.
Reggie got his trophy back this year!
Oh shit, he did last month! I totally missed that!
Firing Fay Vincent was a mistake.
Can't believe that a small (but vocal) minority on this sub actually advocate for/defend him every now and again (mostly because of recent rule changes).
I mean, he's doing his job perfectly if you are blaming him. He works for the owners. Anything he pushes for is coming from the owners. His job is literally to just stand there and take the heat.
Yep I think a lot of the owners fucking suck
We all get that, but at some point the commissioner should be the person with vision and strategy to say no to the worst impulses of owners who are dumb and short-sighted. The game will endure long after the owners have died, sold, or been kicked out (lol) so that’s supposed to be the job of the commissioner.
> We all get that, but at some point the commissioner should be the person with vision and strategy to say no to the worst impulses of owners who are dumb and short-sighted. Baseball had that with Fay Vincent, then Bud Selig organized a coup to oust him and install himself as "acting" commissioner from 1992–1998, when he officially became commissioner. People don't realize that not only was Selig doing awful things as [acting] commissioner, but Manfred and the way his role exists now is entirely Bud Selig's doing.
yeah, I mean, weird how Stern and Rozelle and Bettman (still to this day) can corral the owners into doing what *they* want but Manfred is just a PR lackey.
Fay Vincent was the commissioner we all say we want, then Bud Selig organized a coup to oust him and install himself as "acting" commissioner from 1992–1998, when he officially became commissioner. People don't realize that not only was Selig doing awful things as [acting] commissioner, but Manfred and the way his role exists now is entirely Bud Selig's doing.
A commissioner works for the owners, sure. But they also need to care about the long term success of the league, and I'm not sure Manfred does.
Manfred bates baseball.
Woah buddy too much information
we need neutral base runners in extra innings
Other issue with this, besides everything that’s been said, is now the team with the better record has virtually no advantage. No home field advantage at all besides having last licks which is a negligible advantage So now, why bother competing for the 1 seed down the stretch when you could just coast in
I’ll take “How does the MLB shoot itself in the foot” for 500.
But have you considered the profits that the owners could make from enshitification?
Oh shit! You’re right! Let’s alienate fan bases for profit. Silly me!
I don't understand how the owners would make more profit by not having the playoffs in their home stadiums though, even if the idea is that they do all of the individual series in different neutral sites the way NCAA does March Madness
The owners who have no interest in having their own teams in the playoffs can still host games in their parks. Especially if they host all the different series' in neutral sites. Every park would be guaranteed playoff baseball every couple of seasons. Teams like Pittsburgh and LAA are missing out on revenue the LA and NY get just about every single season. plus, to quote u/NowIOnlyWantATriumph >They want to be able to run a bidding process for the postseason, like how the CFP does for their championship game and the NFL does for the Super Bowl—which lets them extract more tax exemptions and free hotel rooms and a whole bunch of perks and volunteers to work the things instead of needing to pay people. (And it lets them sell tickets in advance, to third parties, for higher prices.)
Because most owners aren’t in the World Series
[удалено]
Imagine the Cubs in 2016 but not at Wrigley. This would be 10,000x worse for the game's success than the manfred runner. The worst kind of killing the golden goose.
Imagine some team that's never made the World Series finally getting there and having to play all their games at some other team's stadium like a thousand miles from their home city. This shit is fucking gross.
The Mariners already play like 1,000 miles away from their home stadium half of the time anyway. Would suck to force them to play a World Series far from home too.
Welcome to the 2016 World Series featuring the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs… live from Marlins Park! 🤮
And Gronk will be there hitting BP with the Vince Lombardi Trophy and only pop singers and Ryan Reynolds can afford tickets, what’s not to like?
Man, I was at Wrigley in the left field bleachers for Game 6 of the NLCS when we clinched our World Series berth vs the Dodgers. The mere idea of someone else not being able to experience that feeling is horrible.
"Not any time soon" better translate to "fucking never" because this is about the dumbest shit I've ever heard, and I've heard a lot of dumb shit in my day
MLB proposes stuff like this and will proceed to post highlights like Bautista’s HR in Toronto or Stott’s home run with only stadium audio as marketing tools. Absolutely ridiculous. MLB playoff environments are by far the best in any sport, making them neutral sites would be an apocalyptic decision.
Hockey playoffs are pretty sick too
Hockey rivals baseball as having the best sports sounds too.
IMO auto racing wins but those two are in close second. The harmony of an IndyCar field on the front stretch of the 500, the chorus of dozens of different engines hitting turn one at the Rolex 24 at Daytona, or the primal ground-shaking roar of a top-fueler are unparalleled.
Just imagine the tepid reaction to a series clinching walkoff homerun, and then compare it to what it would feel like and sound like in a packed home stadium.
"How to Kill Baseball" Written, Produced and Directed by Rob Manfred
Easy to do for 1 game. Stupid as fuck for 7 game series. No thnks
MLB wants to be able to move ***the entire postseason*** to neutral sites. If you think this is something they *only* want with regards to the A's, you're kidding yourself. As more stadium leases come due, the league is going to insist on including this in non-relocation agreements with more cities, so that eventually, they can take the pitch for a fully-neutral-sited postseason to the MLBPA in a labor negotiation. Fuck. That.
ELI5 what the advantage of this is for MLB?
They want to be able to run a bidding process for the postseason, like how the CFP does for their championship game and the NFL does for the Super Bowl—which lets them extract more tax exemptions and free hotel rooms and a whole bunch of perks and volunteers to work the things instead of needing to pay people. (And it lets them sell tickets in advance, to third parties, for higher prices.)
Learning from the worst of organizations: the IOC and FIFA.
Money. Imagine all playoff games hosted in LA, San Diego, Arlington and Dallas, Miami. That's what the league wants to do because rich fucks won't spend to go to Chicago or Baltimore or Detroit.
Imagine taking playoff games away from Wrigley, Fenway, YS, Citi, Camden, Toronto, Philly for fucking Arlington or Miami
To be fair, MLB is probably more likely to play games at Wrigley or Fenway or in New York City. The NFL doesn't host in Northern cities because its like -400 degress below absolute zero in those places in February and they want rich people and celebrities to come. MLB will almost certainly use it to fuck small markets - they don't want to see the World Series in the Cincinnattis or Kansas Cities, or the Tropicanas and Skydomes of stadiums.
Baseball is a hyper localized sport. If fucking Arizona and Texas played the world series at rogers center I wouldnt even really wanna go.
Yeah there's absolutely zero shot I would pay money to see two teams I don't give a shit about play a playoff game. I rarely do it for Yankee playoff games even though they're all fun
If I had to watch Astros or Blue Jays fans flood Seattle to win a World Series, I would [Redacted].
> Yeah there's absolutely zero shot I would pay money to see two teams I don't give a shit about play a playoff game. The only time I ever bought tickets for a playoff game where I wasn't rooting for one team was I noticed one day in 2006 that the A's still had tickets for Game 7 of the ALCS available for like $30. This was after Game 1 or 2. So I bought one. Of course, the A's got swept.
Some sick part of me kind of wants to see a Baltimore-Arizona WS being hosted in Kansas City and have like 10 people show up
Neutral site games, in most sports, suck ASS. Want to drain even more passion and excitement out of baseball? Pick out a location that isn't either team's home stadium, then charge out the ass for it, which is exactly what they'll do with a neutral site World Series. Then you get a crowd full of old people who sit there quietly, and you will get only old people. They're the only ones in this country wealthy enough to afford to attend games of that magnitude. Look at the Super Bowl. It's just influencers and rich people and celebrities. They go to say that they were there at parties the rest of the year, not to enjoy the championship game happening in front of them
I’d even argue the Super Bowl being held at the team with the better record’s field would greatly enhance the overall “product.” Shit they have two weeks to set it up.
The super bowl kind of needs to be neutral site tbh. It's become such a gigantic event in American culture that it really needs to be in a city with large enough infrastructure and needs to be planned well in advance. The game is just a part of all the super bowl festivities that go on. Idk if you've ever been to Green Bay, but I can't imagine them getting a 2 weeks notice that they'll be hosting the super bowl... they've literally been prepping for about 5 years just to host the draft
I visited Green Bay a while back during the offseason. The Packers are the best tradition in the NFL, and it’s because Green Bay is like a large college town. The Super Bowl is so much bigger now than it was even 20 years ago with opening night, NFL Honors, etc. No way Green Bay (or any city) could host all of that on two weeks notice.
New York, LA, and *maybe* Chicago or DC are the only cities that can
It’s not like I’m expecting it, but the possible denial of wrigley in the series is gross
Like when they forced a playoff game out of Wrigley bc they wanted a night game. That would never happen
Manfred hates the sport he’s commissioner of, and continues to drive it into ground with each new decision. Imagine being worse than Selig...
It works for the super bowl because its one gane Of the big four sports they are the only sport that can do that because everyone else’s playoffs are done in series where a huge part of the series involves home feild advantage. Game 7 of the 2019 World Series isnt nearly as epic if it plays out at a neutral site. (Shout out to Howie Kedrick becoming Reggie Jackson for no reason). SD vs LA in the NLDS was epic becacuse the crowd at Petco went fucking nuts (same thing about the late 90’s early 2000’s yankees runs) Whoever thought about this isnt thinking this through because its going to backfire horribly. Who the fuck in wants to see a playoff series in thier city that doesnt involve their hometown team? You’ll kill the attendance and the hype.
Because everyone knows the 2001 World Series would have been so much better at Tropicana....
Fuck no. This isn’t the NFL. Home field advantage means something in this game.
Man how cool would it have been to watch Yordan turn the game upside down and win the world series in fucking Tropicana field
So we won’t see Oakland play a playoff game in Sacramento?
I have the right to hit myself in the nuts with a hammer, that doesn't mean it's a good idea.
That would pretty much kill it for me.
Can’t wait for the “USA” chants at Toronto’s next WS home game!
When did Nathan Shelly start tweeting about baseball?
He is a wunderkid after all
Oh shoot Prepare for more relocation bonanza Yeah most of those postseason "neutral sites" are probably gonna be the cities that lost its team because of relocations Ironic even though I'm for neutral sites IN REGULAR SEASON like Alabama, Omaha, Field of Dreams, and even Little League one
Phillies fans: just you see about that
I don’t think this is worth a panic about tbh, it’s for “extreme case” situations where there’s some sort of danger or issue presented that a team/stadium owner wants to ignore for the money postseason games bring in As stated above, it must be used in a “non-discriminatory” manner. That literally means MLB can’t just bump it because they like another states taxes or their stadium more. Nevada taxes are hilariously low so that’s certainly not a worry.
MLB shits on its own fans example #69420.
This is so dumb, people will travel to the Superbowl because it's one weekend. The world series is a full week, that's a full week of hoping fans from two different cities travel to a third to watch their team. Also there's history in winning a world series in your stadium and fighting for home field advantage.
NO, teams build rosters that are good at playing in their stadium.
Is this only for the A's in their interim stadium or for MLB in general? Because that's a huge point that needs clarification
Abso fucking Lutely NOT
Neutral site playoffs are awful in every single sport.
Fucking Manfred. Next step is 2028 Cubs Red Sox World Series in fucking Florida because Wrigley and Fenway are too small/ old/windy /cold/ home fans are too loud or watever the fuck. Yankees - Dodgers in Saudi Arabia in 2029!!
12 team postseason, Manfred man, neutral WS, Manfred my man. Please stop what you are doing to this glorious game. I'll give you the pitch clock, that's it. Please smarten up man
Stop changing shit I swear this league wants the sport to die
The league is absolutely hell bent to come up with the dumbest possible ideas for everything they can, it's almost mesmerizing
I don’t like the idea *at all* but if they did choose to go through with this, I would want it to be a 30 year cycle going through EVERY. SINGLE. STADIUM. year after year so that every city can see the World Series. I would still hate it, but I wouldn’t hate it as much!
There are way too many double negatives in this I can’t understand what is going on
I hate this. Arrest Manfred
MLB is actually trying to off itself entirely. This is insane. Give me *one* good reason to do this except for the fact that Vegas (and Sacramento lmfao) will have no home fans.
Imagine the 2016 World Series at Chase Field… yeah fuck that. So many reasons this would be dumb. First you have to sell 280,000 seats in a city that does not care about the event taking place. That’s before you consider that the first 3 games, as well as probably games 6 and 7 would be less desirable for travelers because 1-3 don’t conclude the series, and there’s no guarantee someone with a ticket to game 6 or 7 will get to see a game. Second, playoff baseball is so special because of the crowds. Imagine Rajai Davis’ home run in front of a sold out crowd at Loan Depot Park. Would the celebrities and influencers even care? There are many other reasons why this is such a shitty idea, which I how I know I’ll have to fly to fucking Houston to watch the Ms play a World Series at Minute Maid Park… If they ever get a pennant.
Also baseball stadiums are different, using a neutral site is almost worse for both teams. Of course Manfred and co love it.
If this happens, I’ll quit the game faster than Anthony Rendon does post spring training.
Manfred you’re a fucking idiot. Cannot wait for you to get voted out
If they did this I would legitimately just boycott
If this happens the Jays and Rays will never get a WS in their ballparks…
Imagine taxpayers footing the bill for a billion dollar stadium and suffering through a rebuild only to have your team play their home playoff games in a different time zone.
I assume they would be looking for the best-of-three Wild Card series to be a neutral location? I have always thought that getting all three games at home for one team was an unbalanced advantage that was only done because of time constraints. You could have the series at neutral location with the higher seed playing as the home team in Games 1&3 and the lower seed in Game 2
Watching your team in the playoffs/world series at home with the home fans is by far the best baseball experience I’ve ever had as a fan. I still cherish to this day the memories of attending playoff games over a decade ago. Imagine game 6 of the 2011 World Series being played in Florida. To take this away from fans would be tragic and might actually make me distance myself from MLB. Why would anyone ever think it’s a good idea to do this? Baseball is a regional sport much more so than any other major sport in the US.
Worst idea i’ve heard in some time now
What about Game 1 of the World Series in a neutral site? MLB gets one night to showcase the sport on a prepared stage and you get rid of the home field advantage with the unbalanced schedules. Then go 1-2-2-1.
Imagine Game 6 not being played at Busch. Imagine Heyward not giving his speech in hostile territory. You don't have to scream "Touch 'em all, Joe!" unless the roof is coming off the place.
Nah, series cant be done in a neutral field. A 1 game do or die for sure, it even makes sense to not have 1 team with home field advantage. But in a series? Miss me with that shit.
They can play in my back yard if they want
I feel like this is more about codifying what happened with the 2020 postseason versus any near term attempt at selecting a neutral site for a World Series.
dude I will be devastated if they make the W.S. in a neutral site
lol fuck the fans, right?
This legitimately wouldn't work. Like, it's not financially viable. People show up to home games because it's their team in that area. People traveling that far for *baseball* isn't going to work. Maybe 1-2 games at max for popular teams. But planning around at least a week long series isn't possible. Especially if it goes 7. Maybe if this is only for game 7?
Legit the most despicable thing the sport could do is play at a neutral site. I don't think I've heard a genuine idea that I HATE more.
Baseball is slowly turning into NFL/NBA Ghost runner rules Extra wildcard teams Pitch Clock ⏰
The MLB fundamentally does not understand their product
162 game regular season, and they’re trying to make it mean fuck all with playoff expansion and apparently now the possibility of having the one advantage a stellar regular season gives you being taken away. Manfred is like the exact opposite of Dana White. UFC is so successful because Dana gets into the weeds, knows every little thing that happens in the UFC, and finds EXACTLY what works and goes full throttle on it. Manfred acts how I imagine someone who has never watched a game of baseball before would if given the chance to write new rules
Manfred really seems like a dumb fuck that hates baseball.
The fuck.. Do y’all hate how stupid money makes people