The original This Week in Baseball was one of my favorite shows. Mel Allen, the music, especially the classy ending music, “Gathering Crowds” and all the plays you just had to see that week. There is a new version of the show now called: What Did Baseball Screw Up This Week?
Same answer as last week. Plenty.
I promise there will be positive baseball talk later in this edition of Baseball or Bust and I will highlight a team I believe can be a savior to the game. More on that later.
First, baseball needs this wake up call.
Instead of focusing on players developing their skills through proper and experienced coaching and development, you know, all the guys teams fired, the game is trying to push new rules to cheapen the product even further.
Instead of beating the shift, it’s about eliminating or limiting the shift. How about expanding the lemon slice area that a hitter now puts the ball in play, How ‘bout that, as Mel Allen used to say. How about dropping a bunt down when defenses are over-loaded to one side. Encourage that.
Instead of teaching base-stealing techniques and base-running, it’s about making bigger bases and limiting tosses over to first base to make it easier to steal bases.
So at AAA this year it is no longer the perfect 90 feet between bases. So much for tradition. Great job baseball. Maybe the NFL can make the 100-yard football field shorter next year, too.
“WHO NEEDS A WORLD SERIES TROPHY?"
“IT’S JUST A PIECE OF METAL.”
Baseball is so focused on finding trickery to speed up the game, they just keep on opening up one Pandora’s Box after another, each having its own unintended way of slowing the game down to a crawl.
Remember when “Instant’’ Replay was going to fix everything? Yeah.
And just wait until they bring in the electronic strike zone. Batters will be whining constantly, unless they shrink the strike zone even more, which is possible. After all they went from 15-inch bases to 18-inches, maybe they will shrink home plate from 17 inches to 15.
It’s all for the good of the game, they will tell you.
Baseball encourages hitters to swing from their ass on every pitch, another Pandora’s Box, and now that is what they have, they are drowning in a sea of non-action and fans are bored. You broke it baseball, fix it by bringing back the hit-and-run, and not making the baseball fly out of the ballpark like a jetball.
The afraid of its shadow-new breed front office wanted to eliminate the risk of stealing bases or gambling on taking the extra base and now offenses can’t put together rallies. They worry about what might happen instead of seeing what is happening.
Even though Moneyball was a good book and movie, the Oakland A’s still haven’t won anything.
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