Major League Baseball has captivated fans since 1869 and grown into a billion dollar business. Unlucky for them it has started going in the opposite direction.

In 2003, baseball viewership for Fox was above 3.37 million viewers; that number has dropped to 2.5 million viewers in 2012. The same for ESPN’s Sunday Night Baseball who saw viewers drop from 2.75 million in 2007 to 1.78 million in 2012.

If baseball does not want to fade in to obscurity they need to change something, drastically.

They need to shorten time in between pitches; it does not take 45 seconds to pitch one pitch. Batters do not need to readjust their armbands when they do not even swing at the pitch.

There should also be less time in between innings. Innings can begin and end so quickly that justifying four minutes of commercials in-between innings that are three minutes seems a little ridiculous.

Also in recent years, money has been flying out of franchises hands faster than ever. In 2013 the average salary increased by 5.4% to 3.39 million dollars the steepest increase since 2006.

Baseball needs a salary cap, something to regulate the amount of money teams can spend on players. It will even out the unfair advantage teams like the New York Yankees have over everyone else, just based on money.

Something else that needs to go is the idea that 162 games are an acceptable amount of games. The value of each game is lessened because of the fact that there are so many. If you cut the amount of games in half, to 81, you still get a fair amount of games and they also become worth more, making each game more competitive.

Baseball will always be America’s past time, but if the MLB does not change something immediately they may run the risk of permanently being in the past.