Not One More Visit, I Say

In his never-ending embrace of half-measures to speed up the game, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has decreed that, starting this year, teams will get six sanctioned non-pitching-change visits to the mound per nine-inning game (and one more per inning for extra-inning contests).  Anything after that, and the homeplate umpire takes on the role of bouncer.

Yo, Robbie, listen up.  This is a joke, an unfunny one at that.  You want to speed up the game?  Fine, then do something about the number of commercials.  You lack the spine for that?  OK, then have the umpires do their job.

Baseball revolves around hitters hitting and pitchers pitching.  The constant adjusting of batting gloves and shaking off of signs from the catcher should have been addressed decades ago.  Mike Hargrove earned the nickname of The Human Rain Delay for his fidgeting in the batter’s box.  Umpires let him get away with it, and anyone else who wanted to follow in Hargrove’s footsteps, which, by the way, he stopped making as a player in 1986.

As much as it pains me to admit, players like Jon Lester and Willson Contreras of the Cubs are right about people using technology to steal signs; worse yet, the cheating can entail more than intercepting the centerfield TV feed that shows the catcher relaying signs.  I went online and found that there are apps and software for lip reading.  And here I thought pitchers and catchers were being paranoid when they put their gloves over their mouths to talk.

So, I was wrong, just like the Commissioner is in thinking his latest half-measure will work.