THERE IS, INSIDE THE HEARTS OF BASEBALL FANS, AN ALARM BELL THAT GOES OFF every time someone tries to change the game. True, the alarm is not inside all baseball fans, but it’s there for many of us, and it rings “Nooooooo!” whenever even the most subtle of changes to baseball is proposed. I don’t know that this happens for any other game.
For instance, a few years ago, the powers that be in baseball—in their never-ending and previously hapless efforts to speed up the game—ruled that pitchers no longer had to physically throw the four pitches when intentionally walking a batter. Since the dawn of the game, pitchers looking to purposely walk the hitter would toss four outside pitches to the catcher, a boring little production often played to a chorus of boos from the stands.
Well, going forward, the manager could just point to first base and the intentional walk was automatically issued. It is hard to imagine a more minor pronouncement, and yet because this is baseball, there was outrage, palpable outrage, as baseball fans (and I plead guilty) scanned baseball history to find instances when the four-pitch intentional walk had created a memorable moment.
What about in the 1972 World Series when Oakland’s Rollie Fingers tricked Cincinnati’s Johnny Bench by feigning an intentional ball and instead sneakily fired strike three?
What about in the movie The Bad News Bears when the much-hated Yankees tried to intentionally walk the Bears’ star player, Kelly Leak, only to have Leak reach out and drive the ball into the gap anyway?
How could you strip such treasures away from the game? And for what? A few seconds of game time? How dare ye!
Remember: This outcry was over four pointless throws between a pitcher and catcher.
“I think you have two different dynamics going,” Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred says. “For fans, I think it’s generally about history and tradition. ‘Hey, we love the game; why are you changing everything?’ For players, it’s a performance issue. Change creates fear among players because it might affect the way they perform on the field.”
Just imagine how bonkers people will go this year.
See, changes are coming to baseball in 2023 … and beyond. Big changes. Game-altering changes. Why now? Well, baseball has finally decided to draw a line in the sand. The issues facing the sport have long been in the news. Attendance has gone down over the past ten years. Surveys show that baseball keeps losing ground to basketball and soccer, especially among young fans. Baseball’s shrinking television ratings are a more complicated story than many make them out to be—local television ratings are still strong—but it is simply true that the 2022 World Series was the second lowest rated since they began tracking the numbers five decades ago, ahead of only the Covid World Series in 2020.
Even more to the point: Baseball’s ever-slowing pace and the rapid increase in strikeouts have come to exasperate even hardcore fans. They have been adamant in every survey that MLB has done: “Give us more action!”
And now, yes, MLB reacts. Finally.
In years past, baseball dealt with the aversion to change by trying desperately hard not to change. It
