It was an ordinary day. Reading George Will's column that appeared in "The Washington Post" that told that he likes the new baseball rules that have been initiated this year. The headline in "The Washington Post" tells us that George says it's time to rejoice with the new rules. His column began with...When he was a New York Mets baseball broadcaster, Ralph Kiner once explained how cold weather can shorten by 25 feet the distance a fly ball travels: "If the fence is 338 feet away and you hit the ball 338 feet, you'll be 25 feet short." This season, however, the revived national pastime is giving the nation a lesson in how to put the spring back in it's step by taking numbers seriously enough to decisively modify them. Even if you are not a fan, pause to appreciate Major League Baseball's solutions to the problems caused by everyone in the game behaving reasonably on the basis of accurate data. Stuffed to the gills with "analytics" about pitchers' spin rates, launch angles, etc., baseball sagged into longer nine-inning games--3 hours and 5 minutes on average last season. Pitchers standing 6-foot-5 and throwing more than 95 mph were overwhelming the game with velocity. It seemed sensible to try to score with one mighty home-run swing than by stringing together hits. Soon there were seasons with thousands more strikeouts than hits. Batters put fewer balls in play...and fans began to yawn and attendance dropped. The solution was to change the rules! Pitchers must deliver the ball 15 seconds after receiving the ball from the catcher! If not, it will be an automatic "ball." In this first season of using the rule, scoring was up and a nine-inning game took only 2 hours an 36 minutes. Compare that to baseball's greatest game ...game 7 of the 1960 World Series, when the Pittsburgh Pirates beat the Yankees 10-9 on a walk-off home run...and there was constant action that was packed into 2 hours and 36 minutes. In 2022 there were 232 nine-inning games at least 3 hours and 30 minutes long, more than one a day for six months! If 2023's games are on average 25 minutes shorter than last year's, this will effectively spare position players, in a six-game week, from the equivalent of a full game on the field. Yeah...some "traditionalists' regret this restoration of traditional baseball - the game as played and experienced throughout most of the 20th century. Real conservatives, who are forever being told "you can't turn back the clock," should rejoice that MLB has done just that. Before this season's resurrection-through-reform, baseball was tumbling toward steady decreased significance. Sensibilities change, entertainments are perishable. For decades, boxing was one of America's premier pastimes. Most people knew the names of recent and contemporary boxers. OK...go ahead and name todays champions! Baseball is once again reconnecting with its past and is poised to reclaim the title of national pastime. It temporarily lost this to the NFL, which, like boxing, involves the public deriving pleasure from watching athletes accept a high risk of brain damage. Baseball has revived itself by remembering something that is encoded in America's DNA, something that has been intensified by life lived at digital speed: impatience. One of professional baseball's founding fathers, A.G. Spalding (1850-1915) noted. "Two hours is about as long as an American can wait for the close of a Base Ball game --- or anything else, for that matter. A wit has wondered why fans in ballparks stand in the seventh inning to sing "Take Me Out to the Ball Game" when they are already there. Perhaps this is because of baseball's glorious everydayness: "Take me out to tomorrow's game, too." "Tomorrow, and tomorrow, and tomorrow/ Creeps in this petty pace from day to day"? Not in ballparks in 2023! Fans rescued from a creeping pace, can, unlike sourpuss Macbeth, cheerfully anticipate briskly played games tomorrow and tomorrow and tomorrow. So....what are your thoughts on baseball as played this year? I for one love it!! I'm ready to watch tomorrow's game already. It goes so fast today that I'm ready for the next day and then the next day and so forth!! Bring it on!!! It certainly is not as boring as it was the past couple of years! It was another extraordinary day in the life of an ordinary guy.
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