Baseball and gambling have a long, intertwined history. In 1919, eight Chicago White Sox players, including star slugger “Shoeless Joe” Jackson, conspired to throw the 1919 World Series in exchange for player rewards. The players believed they were underpaid and mistreated. The Cincinnati Reds became world champions.
In 1970, it was reported that Detroit Tigers pitcher Denny McLain had been a partner in a bookmaking ring. According to Sports Illustrated, a mob agent crushed two of McLain’s toes to force him to pay off a horse racing bet. McLain was suspended from the game, then retired. He spent seven years in prison for related crimes.
Manager Pete Rose of the Cincinnati Reds – who still holds the record for career wins in baseball (among others) – bet on 52 Reds games during the 1987 season. He also wagered tens of thousands of dollars per week on other sports for many years. In 1989, Rose was banned from baseball and the following year she served five months in prison for tax evasion.
In the meantime and since then, there have been other gambling incidents involving baseball players and managers.
This year, however, the biggest bet in baseball was placed by the league itself. I talked about it before the season, with some trepidation. Changing America’s pastime is not without risks. But baseball, it seemed, had become too long for a fan base whose attention span was diminishing. The games were boring.
Analysts have blamed the home run addiction that began with Babe Ruth and grew in the age of data analytics. Teams were doing everything they could to optimize their performance, rearranging their defense in ways that made it harder to get a hit. This made the home run the preferred (if not the only) way to score.
Major League Baseball responded by implementing rule changes, intended to speed up the pace of play and increase offense. A timer was introduced to push players toward the batter’s box and reduce the time between pitches. The bases were enlarged to increase the risk of theft. Limits were placed on “disengagement” – the number of times a pitcher could leave the rubber.
Clearly, the league hit a home run. According to Forbes, total attendance for the 2023 MLB season was 70.7 million, an increase of 9.6% from 2022. Year-over-year attendance was higher for 26 of the 30 clubs in ball. Matches were faster, lasting an average of 2 hours and 39 minutes, compared to 3 hours and 10 minutes two years ago. Batting averages, stolen base attempts and even home runs have increased.
This validates what for me is the most interesting part of the story. Baseball Commissioner Rob Manfred was the architect of the new rules. As I wrote in the spring, Manfred had been considering changes to the game virtually since he took the helm in 2015, according to New York Times reporter Mike Schmidt. But having never played baseball or managed a team, Manfred believed it was important to listen and learn from baseball’s constituents, especially fans. Apparently they had a lot to say.
Manfred’s ability to listen meant he didn’t have to convince people that rule changes would be good for baseball. He understood the importance of hearing different points of view before giving his own.
It’s not easy to do. In conversations, we often speak straight away, sharing what we think, offering advice, or telling a personal story. Or our minds wander, searching for what to say next.
This sends the message that the conversation is all about us (the other person – not so much). But as William Ury, co-founder of the Harvard Program on Negotiation and author of “Getting to Yes,” writes, “How can you change someone else’s mind if you don’t know where they’re thinking?” ? »
Listening also helps us communicate with people, showing them that we care. And everyone wants to be heard. At the National Conflict Resolution Center, we teach a course called “The ART of Inclusive Communication.” The “A” in ART stands for active awareness, part of which is true listening. This means focusing on the other person and asking questions that encourage them to
say more about a subject. This means making a genuine effort to understand their perspectives and underlying needs. As Ury writes, it means “listening to the human behind the words.”
Manfred, it seems, did all of the above. It was a safe bet: after all, the more you listen, the more you are heard. This is how real persuasion begins.
Dinkin is president of the National Conflict Resolution Center, a San Diego-based group that works to create solutions to difficult problems, including intolerance and incivility. To learn more about NCRC programming, visit nrconline.com
