Ever since I was a kid -- and, research tells me, long before that -- baseball has been on the brink of a catastrophic ruin of Biblical proportions. As we come out of the All-Star break, the grim baseball headlines seem especially plentiful. (Oh, on the subject of the All-Star Game, I'm tracking down a rumor that the All-Star players were so frustrated by the tied outcome that they got together and agreed to meet after the season at their own expense to finish the game).

As long as I can remember, people have been railing about how baseball needs to be "made better." I want a piece of that pie. I'm a problem-solving type of person: When my hair is dirty, I wash it. When I'm hungry, I eat. When the government tries to read my thoughts, I put an aluminum pot on my head. Problems solved, see?

So then, as we prepare for the second half of the 2002 season, here are my proposals to make the sport better.

1. Make stadium food prices higher.
Yes, you heard right: higher. The four-dollar Coke and five-dollar hot dog are simply not expensive enough to discourage purchasing them and if it's one thing we Americans need to do less of it's eating. If we keep consuming the way we do, pretty soon ballclubs are going to start making noises like the airlines about charging oversized patrons for two seats.

2. Bud Selig should get a better haircut.
Oops! He already did! Expect it to start having a big impact on how he is perceived any day now. Actually, the trouble with Selig's tonsorial situation is not so much the initial cuts; it's the post-cut maintenance. Therefore, I should amend this to read "Bud Selig should get a better combing and gelling technique."

3. Bring back the designated hitter.
But first, get rid of it.

4. If the balls and players are juiced, why not the fans?
Isn't it high time we all got our own muscles? Take Tuesday night, for instance. If you were Selig and you were faced with the decision of ending the All-Star Game without a decision, wouldn't you be less inclined to take that game away from the crowd knowing they were all stoked up on human growth hormone and aardvark testosterone and the like? As it was, the steroid-free crowd made a lot of noise but their bark was worse than their bite because they did not have the collective strength to cause some havoc. Knowing this, Selig was free to make any decision he wanted.

5. Stadium parking costs should be pegged to the value of the car.
I was recently offered $100.00 as a trade-in for my car. I also recently saw people charging $25.00 to park eight blocks from Fenway Park for a game. These two incidents are unrelated in that I did not drive that particular car to Boston but you see where I'm going with this. There will soon come a time when the cost of parking a car at a ballgame will cost more than the actual value of the car being parked. This will be very hard on lower income fans -- especially those that are actually living in the car in question.

6. Raise ticket prices.
Of course, do we really want to spend a lot of time worrying about the low-income baseball patron? Probably not.

So, with that in mind, how do you know what you're seeing is high quality if it doesn't cost a lot? Hmm? Right. You don't. The average naked eye is far too unsophisticated to discern the difference between the talent levels of big-league players and those of neighborhood layabouts throwing an orange wrapped in electrical tape around an empty lot. Major League Baseball can assure itself the perception of a high quality product by continuing to raise prices across the board. Remember: the more something costs, the better it is.

7. Expand interleague play.
Refute this logic: if a schedule with some interleague play is good, then one with all interleague play must, therefore, be even better, right? Why keep it as just a novelty? Let's have a schedule wherein teams play only teams from the other league. The first time they meet teams in their own league will be in the playoffs. How's that for drama?

8. Lengthen Game Times.
Baseball, the so-called "sport that doesn't wear a wrist watch," is allegedly in a full-blown length-of-game crisis. But have you ever asked yourself this: who is doing most of the complaining about how long the games take to play? That's right: sportswriters, guys who are on the clock while they are at ballgames. The sooner the games end the sooner the can file their stories and be done with work for the day. This will clear their time to pursue their other loves, such as painting, cross-stitching and bonsai gardening.

For the people who aren't paid to be in the park, however, the longer the game, the more bang they're getting for their buck. Witness:

Ticket Game time   Fan cost per minute
$30    2 hours     $.25 per minute
$30    2.5 hours    .20 per minute	
$30    3 hours      .167 per minute
$30    4 hours      .125 per minute
$30    5 hours      .10 per minute

Just look at those prices. The fan who has the drive and determination to stick out an especially long contest is, for the price of a $30 seat (still a good view in most places) really working that per-minute cost down to a reasonable amount.

So then, what do we do to make these contests longer than they already are? There are the Mike Hargrovesque techniques of futzing around the plate before each pitch, of course, but we're not looking for mere filler here -- we want more baseball. Increased offense would help because with more scoring comes more pitching changes, naturally. Batters working deeper into the count can make a great contribution to lengthening games. If pitchers would make a concerted effort to return to the more elaborate windups of yesteryear (a la Paul Byrd of the Royals), precious moments could be grafted onto every game.

9. Don't contract just two teams, contract all but two teams.
People are always whining about dilution of talent. Here's how you solve that problem: only have two teams. Imagine what those teams would look like? Well, you don't have to; they'd look a lot like the teams from last night, except that one of them probably wouldn't have five shortstops. They could barnstorm around the country together and then meet in the World Series. They would be the two best teams in the history of the universe.

Or, failing that ...

10. Give the Yankees right of first refusal on every professional player.
Why not save time and hassles? If they want the guy, he's going to end up on the team anyway.

11. What about the shut-ins?
During baseball's second great strike (1981), I listened to a lot of sports call-in radio shows because I was too young and stupid to realize that I was under no obligation to do so. Not a night went by without some guy calling in to say that the strike was hard on "shut-ins" because it denied them one of the few pleasures afforded those who are alone. (I assumed from this reasoning that all shut-ins had broken hands.)

I wondered to myself what a shut-in was and I how I could get into that line of work because it sounded pretty cool. Going out of the house is grossly overrated -- especially now that we have the internet. Anyway, now that there are more shut-ins than ever, they should be provided with scratch and sniff cards that enhance their remote baseball experience. Some of the smells on the cards could include hot dogs, glove oil, stale pretzels, grass, spilled beer, sun block and -- in honor of the late Ted Williams -- the smell of burning wood. They could access that last scent whenever a guy with great bat speed fouled back an offering from an especially hasty pitcher.

12. The commissioner of baseball should be more powerful than the president of the United States.
He or she should have the right to command people to attend games and watch them on television. If this is truly our national game, then we need someone powerful enough to force the entire population to act like it is.

13. It should be I who is that commissioner.
Yes! Power!!! If I were commissioner, I would direct that there be balconies overlooking all the major league stadiums (like the one in left-center field at Minute Maid Park in Houston). Upon these balconies I would stand with my hands on my hips, rearing back and chuckling maniacally in comic super villain fashion. (Wouldn't you respect bud.com more if he did sort of thing?)

How long would I last as commissioner of baseball? About as long as my first statement to the owners regarding their need to get their acts together. That is unless my first paycheck showed up before I had a chance to say anything. In that case, I would roll over and be their little lap dog. You whack up that six-figure salary 26 times and see how big that check is every two weeks -- even after taxes -- and tell me you wouldn't do the same thing.

Jim Baker's column usually appears on Mondays during the baseball season. He also writes Monday through Friday for ESPN Insider.