Ya know I knew this was going to happen. When my Buccos would finally have a slew of their recent draft pics and trades hit the bigs, where finally I would see some of Ben Cherington’s work come to fruition. Where My Bucs might become relevant, maybe even with an unexpected fire to start the season, though a yin and yang of course to douse that fire as only my Buccos can, but still give me some renewed hope for the future. But I knew this was going to happen, that something would suck the air out of whatever excitement was in my Pirate Ship’s sails.
That something was Rob Manfred.
He had already started with his silly 3 batter minimum rule a number of years ago, as somehow he was allowed to decide now the strategy of mangers and GM’s for setting rosters and in play decisions with just game pace the excuse. No, this was HIS rule change, I’M the commissioner, toe in the water.
I knew this was going to happen.
Now I have been a baseball fan since, well, since. Since I discovered the game and found myself playing it and checking weather reports (constantly looking out the window) to see if I would be able to play getting upset at mother nature and how she could be so heartless as to possibly bring rain on gameday.
I had my moments as a player eventually even making the varsity team in High School as a freshman, though not enough to override that job at Red Mills Market in Mahopac NY where I would have a couple of dollars then in my pocket instead, knew my “moments” were not going to take me baseball anywhere. But baseball was still a constant. Even if it was as a Pirates fan. Oh, the unending disappointment but the greatest of moments when they didn’t disappoint once in 1979 (twice technically in my years, when I was 7 in 1971 as well, but I had other concerns then, like being 7 and annoying my Mom).
Now could I have ever have imagined a day where my boys didn’t get me through a summer with slim hope until September or worse, only July and then just to muddle through the rest?
No.
This summer though?
A Rob Manfred summer?
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Death and taxes. That was/is the pitch clock, an inevitable product of short attention spans you were never going to avoid, that I just deal with like the universal DH that preceded it. What are you going to do? Some things just become a be but at least that DH affords an argument that I can live with, that it would possibly extend some careers. Small windows of baseball lives deserve any extra window widening possible.
That clock though is an is what is now but no, I won’t go so far as to repeat “thank god for the pitch clock” as I read too often early on, like there had been some grand reinvention of the game. The pitch clock means nothing to me, never will, I have never wondered how to speed this up, the beauty of baseball being that you didn’t need to, that it DIDN’T have a clock but I guess I could take the evolution as long as you didn’t screw with the very nature of the game … the numbers.
Or maybe I’m just old like a friend who is in the baseball world has noted, something about me un-hiking my old man pants from around my chest.
Then came the permanence of the Manfred Man on second in extra innings and the disingenuous almost dishonest way it was come about with one of the company lines being that it adds new excitement for fans in extra innings, that it adds new strategy (that strategy thing parroted on many an occasion by players and managers and others alike). Well sure, being forced to a play a blind 3 legged goat in left field in extra innings would add some new excitement and new strategy as well just NOT GOOD new excitement and strategy. No, this is as much a mockery as that Goat would be (oh, and more on the Goat thing at the end).
Part of a cynical me even wonders if one of the only reasons for forcing an absolutely useless 60 game season in 2020 was not to lose the golden opportunity to shamelessly claim COVID as a reason for something that baseball wanted all along, knew they were going to implement no matter what. I’m sure there are even some in MLB circles who might think that this beer league softball stuff was ingenious, pat themselves on the back for what they considered a true innovation. For anyone who thinks this a good idea, you obviously don’t have the integrity of the sport at the top of your list and (you) MLB even admit such by abandoning it in the post season with no real explanation as to why, because admitting it wasn’t legitimate baseball for the last 162 games would be just too much (can’t take the chance that the World Series might be decided by a first pitch lead off single scoring a guy who shouldn’t be there in the first place or worse, a bunt and a sac fly).
It’s an embarrassment. Even beer leaguers will tell you that the only reason such a thing exists is because they just wanted to get to the end of game as light dimmed to hit the app special at Chile’s in time. That friend of mine who works in the baseball world has said to me that the players love it. Well, of course they do. There isn’t anyone on the planet who wouldn’t take an opportunity to shorten possible overtime. But I have no sympathy for such, especially for the paychecks that are more than I could earn in multiple lifetimes with multiple me’s. It is simply lazy and and just gimmick’s legitimate baseball. When I was still watching the game and this came to be, one of the first things that I let go was extra innings. I just turned my game off and checked the final in the morning.
Well, Rob, you certainly did shorten games for this one fan at least to only those that go 9.
Then came losing 6 games against division rivals instead to face teams I don’t care of in the name of a balanced schedule. Face possible division foes, the Cards and Brewers and Cubs and Reds maybe with a possible division on the line? Bring it on! to instead see the Royals and the Tigers? No slight to the Royals and the Tigers or other AL clubs but you ain’t rivals, you never will be, I don’t care about you. That is just a true fan suck disappointment and just another game.
Then came handcuffs on shifts, the subtle intimations for years that somehow teams just adjusting defense were cheating, cheating great players who couldn’t figg’r hits they thought they were due. That’s just what good defense does. But no, the labeled “extreme” shifting was portrayed as “robbing” great players of these hits. Again cheating somehow. Sorry great players, but if you can’t figure out how to adjust to adjustments that’s on you, and it’s not Mom’s job to step into the backyard and tell the other kids from the neighborhood to stop being mean and let you feel better about yourselves.
Then came the bigger base bags, like the size of Hotel pillows now. When baseball tries to tell you that the intent of the bigger bases is to cut down on possible injuries around them, just laugh, heartily. The only intent is to shorten the distance between the bases to make offense easier to come by, all offense, singles, doubles, triples and especially stolen bases.
It has all been cheapened.
Mike Lupica noted in an MLB post of his not too long ago something to the effect that stolen bases had come back from the dead. Well of course they have Mike, when you make them easier to get, hinder pitchers to make them even easier, they will indeed be reborn. When you put them on a silver platter with a cupcake stuck with a candle waiting at second base? Yeah, there will be more of them.
There is though one great advantage to all these rule changes and finding a season I haven’t had any inclination to watch … I don’t have to read stories at MLB filled with Statcast nonsense. Made up things that add nothing to the baseball conversation. No one, NO ONE, is hanging around the water cooler discussing the distance traveled to get to a ball, no one is wondering what the percentage of possibility (the silliest of things) for a catch is after that distance traveled was, no one is remarking on anyone’s “elite status”, NO ONE. They’re just not. You can shove a throat all you want. It won’t make them any more relevant or even mildly interesting.
I still have my fantasy baseball teams, all eight of them, some even at the top their respective standings, I still pay attention to a point, I am still excited that the Buccos took that “generational” talent with Paul Skenes and the first pick in the draft and I might even pick the game back up again at some point as, after all, it has been a defining thing for me. But I will never look at the game the same way. I will always know that that stolen base really was stolen, I will always asterisk 2023 and beyond. I’m thinking all mentions of numbers moving forward should be “player X has certain # of ‘new rules’ stolen bases this season” for example. Something to that effect.
Now I am sure that some, if not a great deal of you baseballers out there will echo that friend of mine who is in the game that I mentioned earlier and tell me to just un-hike my old man pants from around my chest and get with the new, more “exciting” version of the sport, will surely note the new numbers that attest to such, or just get out of the way.
You say potato “new excitement”, I say potaato “cheapened”. Fine. I’m a relic.
But for right now? I’m ok. I have other things to fill my time that I just short distance travel, if Statcast were to uselessly measure such a thing, to get to.
PS – coming next season MLB will experiment in the Minor Leagues with outlawing the bunt. When asked why Rob Manfred replied that the bunt slows down the tempo of the game that he has worked so hard to quicken, wastes an opportunity for a major league hitter to showcase their talents with the bat and get a hit on a ball in play that he has worked so hard to make easier to achieve, plus the casual fan really doesn’t understand or care of the “why” of a bunt and that bunts are just f’ing boring anyway and have really shitty exit velocities. Who’s gonna miss that he said?
PSS – and for future reference because it bugs me, really bugs me, bugs the shit out of me. The GOAT was the guy that cost you the game, NOT the Greatest Of All Time.
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