If it ain’t broke ...

Wild ideas to fix MLB may do more harm than good

THERE is a distinct line between innovation and insanity. Which means there is a distinct line separating Howard Hobson and Danny Biasone from whoever the whispering whisperer was who revealed somebody associated with baseball may have been served some funny mushrooms with their rib-eye.

Who were Howard Hobson and Danny Biasone?

I’m glad you asked that question.

Hobson was a Hall of Fame coach at the University of Oregon who in the early ’40s thought up the idea that certain shots taken at a distance on a basketball court should count for three points rather than two. In fact, on Feb. 7, 1945, Fordham played a game at Columbia in which a 3-point line strikingly similar to the one used in the college game now was painted on the floor of the Columbia University gymnasium. The Rams and Lions combined for 20 treys. And then the 3-point line vanished for 16 years until the advent of the short-lived America Basketball League in 1961.

Biasone was the owner of the Syracuse Nationals who noticed that by the early ’50s, his crowds at War Memorial Arena would grow glassy-eyed — if they bothered to come at all — by a string of plodding, dull and grossly overcoached 37-35 games. In his head, he figured an optimum game consisted of 120 shots by both teams. Divided by the 2,880 seconds in every 48-minute regulation game, he came up with the idea of a 24-second shot clock. That one stuck.

Those are two essential parts of a proud American game that were born in the vivid imagination of two original thinkers, the same way most great inventions are conceived. There have been others: the introduction of the two-point conversion in football, for instance. The elimination of the two-line offside pass in hockey. Even the designated hitter, polarizing as it remains, is a rule that makes sense in the overall context of baseball’s rules.

But baseball has become so obsessed with its pace-of-play “problem,” dying to shave seconds here and there off the times of its games, that it has inspired a wave of original thinking that borders on lunacy. Not all, mind you. A pitch clock? Makes perfect sense. Limiting mound visits? Brilliant. Heck, I would guess that even the purest purist would say no apocalypse visited the game last year when the intentional walk rule was expedited from four lobbed balls to a single finger point.

But there is craziness lurking on the periphery. Shortening games to seven innings is one (only certain tortured baseball minds would think it a good idea to offer less of its product).

But the new apex (or maybe low-pex) was reached thanks to an anonymous baseball executive who texted radio host Rich Eisen the other day, suggesting a new rule that a team trailing in the ninth inning could bypass its batting order and simply send up whomever it wishes. The idea quickly went viral and rapidly caused instant widespread outrage, a trial balloon that quickly turned into the Hindenburg.

Innovation is welcome. Insanity is not. Otherwise, one day, you wake up to discover — let’s pick something out of a hat here — a gold-medal hockey game in the Olympics is decided by a shootout. What’s next? A foulshooting contest to determine Game 7 of the NBA Finals? Fourteen-point “super touchdowns?”

Actually, maybe it’s just best not to ask, “What’s next?” As Sundance once said: “You keep thinking, Butch. That’s what you’re good at.”