Take me out to the gimmick game

The Blob will take a break this a.m. from the NCAA Tournament, except to congratulate Michigan for knocking Kelvin Sampson out of the tournament in the most painful way possible. A last-second 3-ball? Yes, please.

We'll return to your regularly scheduled Madness shortly. But for now ...

For now, gimmickry!

In other words,  baseball is finally doing something to speed up the game, which used to be played at a properly brisk pace and now is played at a pace somewhere between A) cement curing and B) grass growing in August. In other words, it's now the Waiting In Line At Disneyworld of sports, only more tedious.

This is even true in the minor leagues, where even untelevised games drag on and on and on. And so the minors have decided to speed things up with some fairly common-sense measures (a 15-second pitch count), and one spectacularly annoying one.

They've decided that extra innings will begin with a runner on second base.  

No. No, no, no ... no.

Listen. No one has pounded the speed-up-the-game drum louder than the Blob, which recognizes that doing so would only be returning baseball to its roots as a fast-paced game and not, like it is now, Still Life On Grass (especially when the Yankees and Red Sox are playing). But there are organic ways of doing it, and there are stupid ways of doing it. Manufacturing baserunners out of thin air is the latter.

This is because baseball, like most sports that aren't mixed martial arts, have rules and traditions that have stood the test of time. One of those rules and traditions is that a baserunner must earn his way around the bases. Simply sticking a guy on second willy-nilly is like driving past the house where Rules and Traditions live and throwing eggs at it. It's like leaving a flaming bag of poop on Rules and Traditions' front step, ringing the doorbell and running away.

I mean, can you imagine if this stupid idea had been around when they filmed that famous scene in "Bull Durham" where the manager yells at his young players?

SKIP: This ... is a simple game. You throw the ball. You hit the ball. You catch the ball.

SMART-ALECK YOUNG PLAYER: Except in extra innings, when we don't have to do any of that stuff.

Talk about diluting the message.

Also, talk about driving obsessive baseball scorekeepers (Are there any other kind?) bat you-know-what crazy. How do you score a baserunner materializing on second out of thin air? Is it a stolen base? Two stolen bases? Do they count it as a walk and a balk? Two balks?

Or maybe the player will get to choose from several options to determine how he wound up on second:

1. A walk and a stolen base.

2. A walk and a balk.

3. A frozen rope into the gap in left-center for a standup double.

4. A frozen rope between second and third that the shortstop muffs and then throws into the dugout, allowing the baserunner to wind up on second.

5. An invisible airplane.

Me, I'd choose the latter. Just so my team could lead the league in the newest arcane baseball stat: RMWUISP.

As in, "Runners Magically Winding Up In Scoring Position."