Baseball, and stuff

 Well, boys and girls, Major League Baseball is back, after another completely avoidable work stoppage. This one lasted 99 days, making it the second-longest in history. About 60 of those days were wasted on thumb-twiddling and Big Swinging Appendage-ing, but you can't have everything.

So I guess this is the part where the Blob says, "Yay! Baseball! It's not dead after all! Yet!"

OR ...

Or this is the part where we go full curmudgeon and say, "What took you so long? And what's the deal with some of these rule changes?"

The Blob, being a cranky old guy, chooses Door No. 2.

What took so long is easy: They're all a bunch of greedy rich guys who don't care about the fans. Greedy rich guys who don't care about the fans do not always take the long view. OK, so they hardly ever do.

The rule changes?

Some of them are good, like the universal (Finally!) DH. I realize this isn't the standard Cranky Old Guy position, but it's beyond ridiculous that one league has had it for almost 50 years and the other hasn't. They should have gotten on the same page decades ago -- because if something's been around for 50 years, it's here to stay. Bitching about it is like bitching about how the Wright Brothers ruined everything with their damned aero-plane.

On the other hand, this Cranky Old Guy says MLB should have held the line on the shift.

The players hated it, so the owners agreed to get rid of it. They also agreed on a pitch clock, which skeptics (i.e.: me) believe will only work if it's enforced. And they harbor deep doubts it will be -- at least consistently.

But back to the shift.

It's what teams do when they face a batter who can't go to all fields, and by the Blob's lights it's a completely acceptable defensive stratagem. But because players today, or a lot of them, never learned to hit to all fields (and forgot how to bunt, too, while we're at it), they claim it's not fair. 

The Blob's curmudgeonly response to that is, well, neither was the Bears' 46 defense, which was basically "Blitz everybody." But while the NFL has neutered its defenses in other ways, I didn't see the league banning that.

Baseball agreeing to get rid of the shift, on the other hand, rewards lack of expertise. But it's designed to open up the game and make it more what baseball was always supposed to be, a game of hitting and movement.

Again, I'm deeply skeptical. The homer/strikeout/homer devolution seems too advanced.

But enough crabbing. Baseball's BACK! And they're gonna have spring training and a 162-game season and everything!

"Oh, great!" Cranky Old Guy says. "Now the World Series won't end until the middle of November! October Classic, my ass!"

Sigh.