The long, harsh winter is upon us now.  Major League Baseball has played its final game of the season.

Rochester Sports Columnist Bob Matthews, one of the best in the business, has called for MLB to decide its Fall Classic on a neutral, warm-weather field or in a dome to avoid the debacle of players and fans having to endure rain-soaked fields and suspended games, players wearing hats with earflaps and spectators in parkas.  That, he argues, is not baseball.  

Wrong, wrong, wrong!

I agree that is not baseball.  The World Series deserves a stage where the best teams and superstar players can fight to the finish in elements that evoke the Boys of Summer, not the Boys of Hypothermia.   That type of overreaction would address the symptom,  not the problem.

Unlike football, soccer or other square-field sports played on surfaces that are identical in shape, size and proportion, baseball is played in domains that are unique to — and reflective of — each city.  The stadiums are characters in the drama as much as any player or manager.  Would a Boston Red Sox appearance in the postseason mean as much without the Green Monster, or would teams fear playing the New York Yankees in Tropicana Field in Tampa*, instead of the monument-rich shrine of Yankee Stadium?  No way!  Baseball parks are special place, and you need only sit with the Bleacher Bums in right field at Wrigley Field to understand.  (* - Next year, it will likely be some other name, and you can't keep track anymore).

Baseball cast its lot more than a century ago with the working man.  It is a game for the masses to root, root, root for the home team.  Fans in each city develop their own identity around their teams.  Whether it's the "we are family" Pirates' fans of the '70s, or the rally monkey of the California/Anaheim/Disleyland Angels of a few years back or the insolent Phillies' fan booing the Chevy Camaro awarded to MVP Cole Hamels.  The hometown fans are as much a part of the World Series as anyone, and to rip the games from their grasp and play in a sterile corporate-ticket environment, like a Super Bowl, is as seditious an idea to the nature of professional baseball as any idea ever presented.

And let's mention the business aspect.  Not only are the home clubs rewarded with a Series appearance and ancillary World Series merchandise sales and added season ticket revenues for the following years, but local hotels, restaurants and merchants become a part of the fabric of the team, and reap some benefit with out of town guests.  It's big money to host a championship event.  

The problem is that MLB and COmmissioner Bud Selig are way out in left field. 162 games.  They start in April, where northern cities face snow delays and frigis temperatures that the players need to endure.  The season stretches into October and the postseason damn near into November.  The season is too long.

It never used to be, before the Players' Union forbade weekend doubleheaders.  Fans were treated to a occasional chances to see two games, while players had a less frantic schedule during the season and didn't need arctic gear to suit up for the World Series.  If you can't compress the season with Sunday doubleheaders, then shorten the season back to 154 games and start the playoffs a week earlier.

The games start too late. Blame the TV execs. For years, baseball survived playing day games.  I remember the nuns wheeling the black-and-white TV into the classroom so that we could watch the Cardninals and Red Sox in '67, which helped foster my passion for the game.  There is nothing wrong with starting a game at 7 p.m. so that kids and working people can actually stay awake through the end.

Start the games on time.  An 8:05 game becomes an 8:30 first pitch when you add all the pre-game made-for-TV garbage.  Start the pre-game stuff a half-hour early, but call "Play Ball" when you say you are going to.  In case you were wondering, they do this so they can sell more TV commercials.  

Finally, get some new marketing execs who can negotiate a network TV contract for the playoffs.  This pay-cable TBS crap diminishes the stature of the game, making it inaccessible to many.  It was laughable that in the 6th game of the Boston-Tampa series that viewers were subjected to re-runs of the Steve Harvey Show because they could not provide a signal.  Can baseball find any more ways to kill interest?