Five ways to fix baseball

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Here are five quick changes to fix the baseball, our National Pastime: -- 1. One set of rules Either the American League should dump the DH, or the National League should embrace it. The idea of a World Series being decided on whose park, and whose rules, are being used is simply ridiculous. My longtime preference would be to get rid of it, figuring baseball was designed as a game that punishes one-dimensional players, rather than rewarding them. But I understand that the DH now has been in place for 34 years, and the National League is one of the last holdouts. At this point, then, it makes more sense for the NL to join the rest of baseball. (And people who know me realize how hard it was for me to write that.)-- 2. Home field advantage based on record It should be that way for every post-season series -- including the World Series. And yes, that means the All-Star Game should go back to being what it was meant to be, merely a midseason exhibition. (Sorry, Fox.) The only exception: The wild card winner would still be on the road in the first round. But if it has the better record than its opponent in the LCS or the World Series, it gets the extra home game. -- 3. Keep (or bring back) organists Longtime White Sox organist Nancy Faust pointed out the discrepancy in an interview a couple of years ago. Ball clubs (read, their marketing people) are fleeing organ music on the assumption that it doesn't skew young. But "when they do a TV or radio commercial with a baseball theme, they'll dig out the sound bites of the organ, because it conveys a theme, a baseball message," she said. "When you hear the organ, you know you're entering a ballpark. There's a sense of constancy because it's something you've always heard." So here's one more vote for more organs and less recorded music.-- 4. More doubleheaders And this doesn't mean those day-night, split-admission jobs that teams have gone to when forced to schedule a doubleheader because of rain. This means a true twin-bill -- two games for the price of one, with a half-hour break in between. Give the fans something extra. Shoot, schedule enough of them, you could end the regular season a week early, expand the first round of the playoffs to best-of-seven and still get the postseason done before Halloween.-- 5. No more overseas series I'm sure the geniuses in sports marketing offices consider it important to expand the brand beyond our borders. But I'm also sure they give little, if any, thought to competitive considerations, or even how the home fans get shafted because of the opportunity to make a few extra bucks in, say, Japan. (In fact, I'd consider this an across-the-board change for all sports. If you want to market the sport internationally, fine. But leave the games themselves at home.) (Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)