You may have gathered that I am none too impressed with the current generation.
"Um, that’s a lot of letters to type, so I’m just gonna go with ‘ur’ mm-kay?"
"Down in front!!! I’m trying to take a selfie!"
Apparently the antidote to a generation that somehow has a shorter attention span than the one before — that would be the one which helped ADHD medications like Ritalin take off like a Khris Davis moon shot — is to cater to it by making the game go faster.
And of course to make the games "end already, ok? I haven’t texted for, like, minutes," Rob Manfred isn’t pursuing a limit to the endless trips to the mound to discuss, analyze, and plan every pitch along with the series of seven throws to 1B. No, he’s looking into the brilliant idea of placing a runner at 2B to start an extra inning.
"Um, so, we’re like using a lot of pitchers and that’s not really working for us right now? Maybe you could just make the game stop sooner?"
"Going all four bases seems like a lot of really harrrrd work. How about maybe just the two?"
"Yah, so is someone gonna score soon cuz my phone’s battery is at 2% and I’ve taken pictures of literally everything in the stadium. By the way, what’s happening in the game?"
Tradition? That’s for has-beens who keep score on parchment paper with a fountain pen. Now we just save us all time by downloading a runner at 2B directly on to your phone! Retweet it with "#sacrifice" and the runner moves to 3B, plus you’ll be entered into a sweepstakes to win an i-Pad you can use to block the view of the person behind you!
"OMG I went to this art museum the other day and the paintings just sat there! It was soooo boring that I finally just had to leave after 7 minutes. I got some great pics, though! Not of the art, of me!!!!"
OK this started as a referendum on Rob Manfred’s stupid ideas that slap real baseball in the face and turned into a diatribe on the modern way of living. That might have been annoying had you possessed any ability to read beyond the 140th character. Luckily, by now my only readers are six senior citizens and Alex Hall, and only Alex because he’s looking for typo’s and gramatical error.s
The fact is, some of the very most memorable games have been epic extra inning affairs. There was Jesse Chavez’ coming out party in the game Nate Freiman won with a broken bat hit off of Mariano Rivera. There was Steve Karsay getting the win in a 17 inning marathon and immediately announcing his retirement. There was Brandon Moss’ moon shot in the 19th inning to win a 6 hour and 23 minute game played on a school night. Chris Davis has a big league win thanks to extra inning marathons.
Speed up the first 9 innings by making the pitchers peer in for the sign and throw the damn ball, instead of having more committee meetings than pitches. And then leave the 10th inning alone.
End rant.
For now.