The Dumbliness of the Wrongheaded Runner

In its infinite, cranium-up-rectal-duct wisdom, Major League Baseball will implement a new rule in an effort to speed up the game so as to attract younger fans – a diminishing cohort among its viewership. Beginning this year, all extra innings will begin with a runner on second base. This represents the best of both worlds: stupid AND awful. In answer to it, I heard a pundit the other day say something with which I agree wholeheartedly. I paraphrase it here:

MLB is concerned that their game isn't exciting enough for young fans (a valid enough argument, I admit,) so what do they do? They move to abbreviate one of the most exciting aspects of it -- extra innings. To which I'll add: if fans don't want to watch a game when it reaches extra innings, they're probably not watching it in the first place.

As George Will said, young people's problem with baseball isn't that games are too long -- it's that they're too boring. The game that became our unquestioned national pastime til the 1970s was filled with excitement: doubles, triples, stolen bases, hit and run plays, bunting runners over, etc. Today there are three dominant outcomes to an at bat: strikeout, walk or home run. Action on the basepaths – the real source of offensive excitement in the sport – is going extinct.

Now, after a hard-fought tie ballgame through nine innings, MLB will inject a mandated, inorganic deus ex machina rule into the mix. The artifice of an unearned runner on second to start the tenth and innings beyond is more likely to piss off traditionalists than attract new fans.

And I'll also add, what's so wrong with ties in baseball? Football and hockey haven't been destroyed by them. And in the old days (like, pre-1900, anyway) baseball DID have ties. If MLB is worried about games going too long, let them put a 12-inning limit on them. In this era of pitch counts, that would also provide an ancillary benefit by giving coaches predictability in helping them manage their pitching staffs.

If your team wins its division by half a game because of a tie during the regular season, I expect you'll be very happy; if you lose by half a game because of it, at least you'll have come by your sorrow in a more honest fashion. If your team comes up short because they lost a game by means of a bloop single driving in a runner who didn't deserve to be in scoring position in the first place, I'll bet you'll really be pissed.