Published by
Sports Illustrated
Sports Illustrated
By Tom Verducci In need of much-needed buzz, baseball will look vastly different over the next five years. Its future depends on it. Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning during the regular season you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers. “The most immediate and pressing need is to revive the public’s flagging interest, to recapture affections which baseball has studiously alienated, to reverse the game’s downward trend in competition for the entertainment dollar.” — Red Smith, Dec. 10, 1968 Baseball has been here before. It may have st…