BASEBALL IS BETTER LEFT UNTOUCHED
This column originally appeared on Wicked Local.

By the time you are reading this column, the Boston Red Sox will have opened the 2017 season and will be off to a record of 2-0 (boy, do I hope I am right).  I hope the first two games the Red Sox played were long, grueling encounters.  I hope they were marathons that forced both teams to exhaust all of their pitching.  I hope that the first Red Sox games of the 2017 season have left journalists in the press box reminiscing about the 33 inning affair in Pawtucket 36 years ago when the immortal Dave Koza finally drove in Marty Barrett to win the game.  I love baseball, and the more of it there is the better.  So I beg you, can we please stop talking about shortening the game? 

The idea that the pace of our national pastime must somehow be abridged seems to imply that it is not enjoyable.  Baseball fans disagree. Monopoly purists would never entertain the idea of shortening the game by eliminating the collection of $200.00 when you pass go.  People who enjoy watching beautiful sunsets never wish that the sun would disappear over the horizon faster.  The game is what it is, and it should stay that way. 

Why can’t we just relish the game and take it for what it is – baseball.  There has been talk about a pitch clock, a downright travesty when you think of some of the colorful figures who have entertained us on the hill.  Imagine our collective baseball memory without the likes of Al Hrabosky (the Mad Hungarian) stomping around the mound or the time-consuming antics of Mark “The Bird” Fidrych?  They have discussed the possibility of beginning extra innings with a runner already at second base, which sounds more like a penalty imposed during a game of Parcheesi than baseball.  They have bandied about limiting the number of times a manager should be allowed to visit the mound during an inning.  Imagine the reaction this might have drawn from managers of the past like Earl Weaver or Billy Martin.  Weaver would have made 20 annoyingly purposeful trips to the mound in order to show those in command where he stood on the issue, and Martin would have punched the umpire outright (and maybe his pitcher, too). 

It is wrong to sacrifice the integrity of baseball because our society lacks the patience to see the game for what it is.  In the words of Major League Baseball Players Association executive director and former first baseman Tony Clark, baseball is “chess, not checkers.”  The game of baseball is like the college class of professional sports, and like any intellectual pursuit, to understand it you must pay careful attention. 

If they really want to speed up baseball games, all they really have to do is redefine a shrinking strike zone.  If they had been calling strikes at the letters as they were intended to be, Mark McGwire never would have been able to waste our valuable time hitting fraudulent home runs while feeding off predictably low strikes.  Conversely, historically great pitchers like Jim Palmer would be unable to survive in the American League today without the ability to use his bread and butter pitch – the high fastball up at the letters. 

 Clocks are not necessary.  Baseball is not the NFL or the NBA.  Baseball is human and not robotic in deciding the pace of the game, whether it is a pitcher working more slowly (usually by design) than his opponent or an umpire having a decidedly wider strike zone than his colleagues.   

To me, there is nothing better than a never-ending baseball game on a lazy summer day, the kind where you fall asleep on the couch or a chair out in the yard while the sound of the television or radio suddenly alerts you to a surprising turn in the action with the noise of the crowd and the excited screams of the announcers.  You wake up to find that three innings have gone by and the complexity of the game has changed entirely, yet you’re blissfully reassured that the timeless game is still in progress.  Ernie Banks most definitely had it right for those who are passionate about the game when he said, “Let’s play two!”

Call me a traditionalist, even a purist if you will.  Give me the organ music of John Kiley.  Give me the enigmatic voice of Sherm Feller.  You can even give me Lou Gorman on the heels of Jeff Bagwell’s questionable Hall of Fame induction.  Just please don’t destroy the game of baseball catering to an attention scattered fan base who is incapable of sitting still for an afternoon or evening. 

I like baseball.  The longer the games are the better.  The reason why the game of baseball is now considered to be too long is because of our societal inability to be able to appreciate a good thing while we have it.