Baseball commish lacking in baseball knowledge
THE QUESTION at some point must be raised and asked loudly: Did Rob Manfred ever play baseball? As a kid, did he ever go to bed with his glove under his pillow or at his side?
Was the World Series must-see TV when he was a kid? Did he care that TV money turned it into toolate-for-kids-to-see TV?
Does he realize that baseball has a soul, a pulse, a heart? Does he understand that baseball now has severe self-inflicted cardiac issues that can’t be cured with annually applied non-curative Band-Aids — the kind that don’t stick?
Does he care that the addition of more and more playoff teams dilutes The Game? Or that more and more inter-league play has rendered the AllStar Game hollow? That his politically pressurized removal of the 2021 AllStar Game from Atlanta to Denver was a capitulation thought by many to be a race-based hoax?
Limiting throws to first to speed up games (perhaps) creates unintended changes to games and strategies. It’s another attempt to eliminate the natural in favor of the artificial.
The unnatural, artificial additive of the 10th-inning automatic runner at second serves as testimony to Manfred’s sense of The Game, his willingness to replace its heart with a clock.
If MLB wants to ensure that its games are played at a logical, appealing pace, it should attack its “modern” self-destructive changes.
Nothing would guarantee shorter games more than further reducing the TV commercial time between half-innings that has grown commensurate with billions in ad revenues extended to team owners, and players who step out of the box after every pitch to adjust their batting gloves — after taking the pitch.
But to even suggest that MLB demand less shortterm money in service to the long-term good and welfare of The Game is anathema to Manfred and company. Why else did MLB make a cross-promotional deal with crypto-fraud FTX without even knowing what the heck it is (and now was)?
Does Manfred see what the totally unintended use of replay rules has done to games: three, four, five minutes per challenge, several times per game?
So he keeps butchering The Game, from the inside out, removing essential organs or bypassing them with experimental, wish-driven gadgetry. Surgery performed with fingers crossed and shoulders in full shrug.
Was Manfred ever a baseball fan? It’s hard to believe he was when his sense of best appealing to kids, and selling MLB Network, is to promote gambling and bat-flipping.