Take Your Base

Just a couple of weeks ago, pitchers and catchers reported to spring camps; last week, spring baseball began (the Blue Jays are off to an awful start, having lost 7 of 9 games). Those of us who are baseball fans have weathered the always seemingly interminable gap between the last out of the World Series and the first pitch of the season. And for those of us who find American football at best boring, it's an especially long, cold winter.

I yesterday came across this story, a proposed rule change to baseball. It proposes to shorten the length of games by allowing teams to conduct an "intentional walk" merely by intimating that the batter would receive a free pass, and off to first base he would go. Pitchers would no longer be required to throw four wide pitches.

The Major League Baseball commissioner's office has proposed a rule change to have the pitcher forgo actually throwing four balls — instead, the bench would simply signal to the umpire that the batter will be intentionally walked.

I personally hate the intentional base on balls; mainly because teams are turning the rules on their heads and using them as a weapon. The entire reason that a batter is allowed to take first on four pitches outside the strike zone is that it is supposed to force the pitcher to throw the ball over the plate, and give the hitter at least a chance to swing. 

In short, the base on balls is supposed to be a penalty to the defending team, not a weapon for it to deploy. I am not sure who the first manager was to recognise that he could take the bat away from a threatening player on the opposing side, but I reckon that it happened pretty early.

Walks are, in short, boring. And that pitchers would use them as a strategy seems a bizarre consequence. It is a bit like how fouls are used in basketball at the end of a game to try to get the ball away from the offensive team, when your own side are behind but still relatively close. IF the other team can make its free throws, of course, then the foul does not help you. And, if your side commits too many fouls, the opposition gets two rather than one automatic free throw. And players can be excluded for racking up too many of them.'

There is really no such parallel in baseball,

But the main point here is this: WHY do they need to make it easier for teams to abuse the base on balls? At least if the pitcher is forced to make the pitches, he can still make a wild pitch. Or commit a balk. Or perhaps get a pitch a bit too close to the plate, where the batter can hit it.

The argument that the game needs to be "speeded up" is silly - if baseball really wanted to speed the games up, then stop all the dithering around. Force the hitters to stay in the box and not step out, adjust their batting gloves, take swings, etc. And stop with the ridiculous cacaphony of music - the "walk up" music as the players meander to the plate. 

Baseball is a game more than it is a spectacle; the rules of course should be fine-tuned when needed. But it is not a spectacle like football or basketball. 

As an aside - last weekend the local NBA team (the Golden State Warriors) faced off in a contest at Madison Square Garden against the Knicks. Oddly, the Knicks tried a little experiment in the first half - the game would be played without music, or phony clapping noises, or other "in game entertainment." 

Does anyone else find it ironic that at a sporting event, the term "in game entertainment" itself was used? I thought that the game itself was the entertainment. 

Warriors forward Draymond Green was having none of it. 

It was ridiculous. It changed the flow of the game. It changed everything. You get used to playing a certain way. It completely changed it. To me, I think it was completely disrespectful to everyone from [NBA senior VP of entertainment and player marketing] Michael Levine to [Warriors president and COO] Rick Welts and all these people who've done these things to change the game from an entertainment perspective.

I am not a fan - at all - of the NBA; in terms of basketball, I far prefer college games. Perhaps it's because there is no so much effort to make the game interesting "from an entertainment perspective." The focus is on the players, not some artificial noise, inducements to tell the fans when to cheer, or ridiculous music piped in.

Baseball fans - real fans - generally do not need to be told when to cheer. We don't need hyped up noise or "walk up" music to enjoy the game. 

With all due respect to Draymond Green, I would prefer if the adolescent need to be entertained all the time were left to NBA fans.
Let the rest of us enjoy our game more or less the way it's supposed to be played.