Strange Times

It’s End Times or strange times for baseball, you decide what moving the pitching rubber back two feet qualifies as.

 

This and several other rules—electronic “help” for plate umpires calling balls and strikes, modified use of shifts, restrictions placed on relievers—are being adopted by the Atlantic League at the request of MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred.  Wow, just what I always wanted—major-league baseball turned into the Canadian Football League.

 

Outside of the electronic eye for balls and strike, this is a recipe for disaster.  If anything is written in stone in life, it’s the distance from the rubber to the plate—60 feet, 6 inches.  Mess with that, and you call into question the very foundations of our country, more or less.  Maybe the commissioner has a young son or son-in-law trying to establish an orthopedic practice.  Whatever other reason would he have for messing with sixty and six?

 

If players are too dumb or stubborn to hit against the shift, shame on them.  If teams are too dumb or stubborn to counter expanded bullpens with expanded benches, shame on them.  If baseball needs the commissioner to save it from itself, we’re too far gone for saving.

 

On the slight possibility that we’re not, the commissioner would do well to instruct home-plate umpires to make the pitchers pitch and hitters hit; no acting like a statue on the mound or stepping out to adjust batting gloves after every friggin’ pitch.  That would save oodles of time.  So would taking one or two commercials per half inning and turning it into a crawler or a 20-second smudge.

 

One last thing—why is the commissioner taking this on himself?  Just once, I’d like to see players face the media and be made to say what they would do to speed up the game or why the game doesn’t need to be touched at all, forget the fans and ratings.  Just once.