Opening Day at the Church of Baseball
Photo by Joshua Qualls (Massachusetts Governor’s Press Office), Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons
Opening Day is upon us, and I couldn’t be happier if I tried. Not only does it mean that Spring has indeed sprung, but that Summer is rounding second! Sunny days ahead! It’s a glorious reminder of better times. For me, it’s an escape from the turbulent times we find ourselves in.
Baseball rises above the constant onslaught (me, gestures vaguely at all of it helplessly) being thrown at us every day here in America. Baseball is better America. The game transcends all of the muck and ugly; it’s pure. Pure of heart, and good for the soul.
When I was young, my mom was a stay-at-home mom, my dad poured concrete and there were four of us kids. Money was tight. My mom made our clothes, we didn’t go on vacations. But at least once a season, we went to a Reds game. It was a treat, even more than a treat!
My parents took us to see the Reds when they were The Big Red Machine, and wow, was it ever. That was when players played hard, with their whole hearts. None played harder than Pete Rose. No matter who he was off the field, when he was on the field, he treated every at bat like the last he’d ever get. When he slid, he went face first full speed. He held nothing back. I have to separate the ball player from the man in my mind. The player didn’t make the man better, but neither did the man make the player worse.
It was a different, better time. I remember being able to go on the field, sit on the knee of Johnny Bench, Pete Rose knelt beside me, hand on my shoulder to get a picture taken. I treasure those memories. have friends (woefully wrong friends) who poke fun of me for my love of baseball and tell me it’s sooooo boring. They make fun of me watching C-SPAN, too, so there is that.
I advise those who poke fun at my love of the game to give baseball another chance and here’s why.
The rule changes in the 2023 season made it exciting like it used to be. The pitch clock has made pitchers pitch and batters swing! No more 30 minute single at bats. It’s fantastic! There are more than home runs; there are hits, too! Enlarging the bases, we’re stealing now and it’s awesome! Games are over in less than three hours and it’s non-stop fun. The crack of the bat connecting with a pitch, it’s a singular sound and now we get to hear it more. People stick around for the seventh inning stretch.
It’s nostalgia coming back for a second helping. I think we all need a little of that goodness these days.
I don’t know about the rest of you, but I wholeheartedly agree with Annie Savoy of Bull Durham: “I believe in the Church of
Baseball!”
But the rule against the shift is awful. There’s a non-fiat solution: go the other way. That hitters were unwilling or unable to do that is part of the problem.Report
“That hitters were unwilling or unable to do that is part of the problem.”
Should’ve lowered the mound instead.
Just not sure what to do with Three True Outcomes baseball. If I’m being serious and waving a magic wand? Need to make the ballparks bigger.
More ground to cover for fielders and fewer homeruns = more hits on contact… and if every ball can’t be launched for a HR… then also lower the mound to address strikeouts. But, we all know what the chicks think about the longball.
But I do like the pitch clock and ending the OCD batter rituals.Report
Anything resulting in fewer HRs is counter productive. I feel like this was settled in the 20s.Report
We had 80yrs of inefficiency that made the game lively *and* HR friendly.
Since then we’ve seen batting averages drop 30 points, strikeouts/game go from 2.5 to 8.5 and walks go up by 1/game and HR go up 1/game. While the total runs per game is exactly the same at 4.39 (odd coincidence between 1920/2024 – but variance is low)
Which is just to say that we’ve optimized for Walks/Strikeouts/HR at the expense of putting balls in play.
One small bright side is that making the bases 3″ larger increased stolen bases per game by 50%… which puts it on the higher side in the ebb/flow of SB over time.
That why I started with ‘lower the mound’ … the biggest ‘bad’ trend in baseball is the Strikeout. The overall bad trend is fewer balls in play – which makes the game less interesting to watch… overall. But yes, HR are fun and if we lowered the mound without doing anything else? We’d get even more of them and more walks.
So… expand the parks, keep the ball lively and batted around the park more and lets see what happens.
Otherwise it’s just the long march of Earl Weaver through the baseball institutions.Report
There was some nice discussion on the baseball forum about how to counter the dependency on strike outs (and the proliferation of pitchers needing TJ surgery). One guy came up with what I thought was a nice solution: penalize teams whose pitchers don’t go a certain (longish, like 6-7) number of innings by taking away their DH after the starter is removed.Report
I certainly appreciate the idea of trade-offs with certain rules; but I suspect that the Players Association would strike before ever letting pitchers to hit again, plus I’d expect them to balk (so to speak) at the perverse incentive of making Starters pitch even if they are out of gas possibly leading to more injuries.
That said, I *do* like the rule change requiring relievers to face minimum number of batters… I could see maybe trying some expansions around that ruleset.Report
Forgot to add that this would effectively mean that the Sox play without a DH all year, right :-pReport
I am usually a traditionalist on matters of sport but have found myself agreeing that the rule changes are good. Attention spans are what they are and I feel a lot better taking my kids to games, confident that we will actually make it through the whole thing, which is convenient for me since otherwise I’d make it to fewer than half as many games a year.
Anyway I am also excited for the season. I’ll also be hoping my O’s can finally turn the corner in the playoffs, but we have many months before it’s time to start getting worked up about that subject.Report
Only one of the “new” rules I despise is the starting extra innings with a “ghost runner” on 2nd base.
It has had the desired effect of avoiding marathon extra inning games, but it’s a cheap finger-on-the-scale type of change that betrays the spirit of the sport. You are suppose to earn your way on base.
The fact that they don’t implement the rule during the playoffs is a clear admission that the concept is BS.Report
Yea I had totally forgotten about that one and I concur. It’s all been sped up enough with the pitch clock as to not be necessary and it’s absolutely against the spirit of baseball.Report
It was a special Covid rule intended to avoid blowing out pitching staffs in a shortened season bc of one 18-inning game.
Now its sole purpose is to protect the $$$ invested in those arms and it is never going away. Unfortunately.Report
I think it was inevitable — by now most other sports have some sort of artificial overtime mechanism too (penalty shots, NCAA start on 25 yard line, NHL 3-on-3, etc). It’s sort of like Southwest finally going to assigned seats because they can’t miss out on seat upsell revenue anymore.Report
Probably, but baseball is a bit different. Extra innings were introduced in the 19th century and unchanged for over a century.
Other sports like hockey and football were content to have regular season games wind up in a draw after regulation for several decades. It was fine, until someone decided it wasn’t.
Basketball has played OT periods in the regular season forever but thankfully have not felt the need to settle a tie after the 1st OT with a 3 point shooting contest.Report
Fair enough. I haven’t checked but offhand I would guess that basketball is high-scoring enough that ties are much less frequent, so it makes sense that that sport would be able to get away with OTs to the death. Re baseball, I totally get the argument from tradition, but at the end of the day it’s a business, and one that has to adapt when market conditions change. If it doesn’t, then there’s eventually not much of an MLB organization left to be preserved.Report
Agreed! I’m with Schilling on the shift rule, too. The shift was a bunter’s paradise. Too bad no one knows how to do it anymore.Report
As someone who use to keep score at every game i attended from the early 80s through about 2012, I approve the rule if only because it brings meaning back to a 5-3 putout.Report
As a longtime Dodgers fan, I’m eager to see if they’ve figured out how to break the sport. Might need to move to randomized rule changes every year right at the beginning of the season, make it so unpredictable that teams can’t just hoard all the talent because they won’t know who’s a “good” player in any given ruleset. 2026: misère!Report
10/10…no notes.Report