Dead time returns in a month. Say it ain't so.

MLB will have a 60 game schedule in 2020, year of the plague, with a few inconsequential rule changes but nothing that addresses the mind numbing essence of baseball: the constant stopping and starting made impossible to enjoy by the ever increasing amount of totally pointless DEAD TIME after each pitch not put into play.

A commissioner could simply instruct the umpires to enforce existing rules but no commissioner has the basic common sense to do that because they fear the player's union and even the umpire's union.

Yes, the NFL and NBA have issues too but this blog is Radical Baseball, not Radical Sports. Plus, problems in those two leagues are minor compared to MLB.

The pitcher is supposed to deliver the pitch within twelve seconds with no base runners. TWELVE, not twenty.

Batters are supposed to ask for time, not step out of the box and essentially get an implicit time out while the pitcher stands there and does not deliver the pitch and demand a called strike because the plate umpire never called time.

Ban coaches (and the manager) from the playing field. They don't have a union.

Baseball lacks flow. Exacerbating this with DEAD TIME is dumb. At some point, "fans" will simply disappear. Maybe 2020 will be when that happens except we may not notice if the games are played in empty ball parks because of the plague. Then when that is finally gone we'll see ball parks abandoned like Ebbets Field, the Polo Grounds, ...