Time to download the ballgame, the latest version is out. Works on your PC and it works on Macs. Let’s just hope that the system ain’t hacked. So, it’s root, root, root kits and malware; viruses you can’t tame. For it’s one, two three clicks you’re out in the XBox game.
T. Michael Stone
When it comes to baseball, I am unrepentantly old school. I deplore the DH, the pitch clock, and the no-pitch intentional walk. The idea of putting a runner on second in the 10th inning to speed up the outcome is anathema to me.
Had that rule been in place in 1963, one of the greatest pitching duels ever might have ended differently.
History records that Juan Marichal of the San Francisco Giants and Warren Spahn of the Milwaukee Braves were locked in a scoreless pitcher’s duel at Candlestick Park on July 2, 1963, for 16 innings until Willie Mays hit a walk-off home run to end it.
But if Orlando Cepeda, who made the last out in the ninth, had been placed on second in the bottom of the 10th, Ernie Bowman’s single with one out would have moved him to third. The next batter, Chuck Hiller, would have had a runner at third with less than two outs. Odds are Cepeda would have scored and ended the game five innings early.
That’s still one helluva pitcher’s duel, but the game wouldn’t have the same notoriety.
But baseball seems bent on ruining the things that made it popular in the first place.
Next year, baseball plans to introduce the Automated Ball/Strike (ABS) Challenge System.
The umpire will still call balls and strikes, but the hitting team can use the two challenges allotted to each team to have an umpire’s call reviewed.
(Umpires may be gone soon.)
“We used the same process with ABS that started with listening to fans, conducting extensive testing at the minor league level, and trying at every step to make the game better,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said.
Well, I’m a fan, Rob, so listen to me: “Introducing automation to baseball will not make the game better. It will just take more of the human element out of it.”
Explain to me why it is so all-fired important to determine the location of the ball with such pinpoint accuracy? A man in a rather silly-looking uniform is trying to hit said ball with a stick, Rob. We don’t need a NASA guidance computer to determine if he should swing or not.
All this dehumanizing nonsense began with Instant Replay. You can argue that IR removes uncertainty. But at what cost, Rob?
Football now shows endless replays of a man’s leather shoe grazing grass. Well, dadgum it, we have to get this right, right?
Baseball’s IR has taken almost all of the fun out of arguments with the umpires. And such foolishness is fun, Rob! Fun! And baseball is fun, right?
Didn’t Crash Davis say that?
If you want to see what baseball can devolve into when fools make the rules, take a look at Pesäpallo, the national sport of Finland.
Pesäpallo is said to resemble baseball. For my money, that’s like saying singers Doris Day and Megan the Stallion resemble each other. You could compare lyrics to Stallion’s “Sweetest Pie” and Day’s “Bewitched, Bothered, and Bewildered” to see what I’m saying, but don’t. And for the love of Mike, don’t Google the lyrics like I did.
In Pesäpallo, the idea of the designated hitter has reached the apex of silliness. The team at bat during a Pesäpallo game has THREE designated hitters known as jokers. They are allowed to enter the game at any point.
And it gets worse. If you’re a powerful Pesäpallo player with some punch at the plate, be careful. If you hit the ball over the centerfield fence on the fly, that is considered a foul ball. The Sultan of Swat ain’t Doodly Squat in Pesäpallo.
A Pesäpallo pitcher doesn’t throw the ball horizontally but vertically, and the batter, who is two feet away, swings as it comes down. The chances of needing Tommy John surgery to fix your elbow are almost zero, but you might well suffer a fractured skull.
So, leave my game alone, Rob.
By the way, I have a new nickname for Shohei Ohtani: Emperor Hero Hitta.
Selah.