Let's hear it out there today for Rob Manfred, baseball commissioner and all-around gentleman and scholar. He's bound and determined to save the National Pastime from itself, and the Blob says it's well Past the Time someone did.
Manfred, it seems, is determined to return baseball to its roots, when it was a fast-paced game and not, like now, a bunch of guys calling time to adjust their sleeves, their batting gloves, the angle of their batting helmets upon their heads. Wanting to be presentable is an admirable quality, but it's also boring. And Manfred does not want baseball to be boring.
And so he's moving ahead with plans to limit the number of mound visits to six, and pondering a pitch clock. He might also be pondering cracking down on the batting glove adjusters, but that is probably wishful thinking on the Blob's part, because that's the part about baseball in the new millennium the Blob finds most annoying.
If it were up to me, I'd pass a rule that decrees any batter calling time to step out of the box for anything but an injury or legitimate equipment situation would get one warning. The second time he does it, he's out. Grab some bench, Style Boy.
This might be anathema to some baseball fans, but not to those of us of a certain age. Routine three-, three-and-a-half, four-hour nine-inning games is not the baseball we grew up with, and it's not the baseball that made the game the National Pastime in the first place. Baseball fans who say otherwise miss this essential point. Manfred isn't trying to appease 2018 sensibilities by trying to make the game move more quickly; he's returning baseball to what it always was intended to be.
And so, good on him. You go, boy.
I think there's a better solution: Don't call time. If the batter isn't ready, too bad. That would add a dimension to pitching... pitching when the batter isn't ready.
ReplyDeleteYep. That would work too.
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