The original draft of this email was sent to Washington Post sports columnist Barry Svrluga who’s advocating yet another convoluted “fix” for baseball. Also copied were several of his sports writing colleagues at the Post and elsewhere, none of whom seems to spend much time talking to actual baseball fans these days. Instead, they’ve become enthralled by the algorithm geeks who are overthinking and thus steadily ruining the great game once loved as the national pastime.
Barry, Barry, Barry,
Two weeks ago you embraced a new rule that would limit baseball’s defensive shifts, and I politely rebuked you. Today you want the pitcher’s rubber moved back [“This sport needs a game changer,“ G8, Mar. 30].
What’s next? Little people pinch-hitting? Oh, wait. That’s been done.
Anyhoo, if the desire is to move today’s excruciatingly slow, strike-out-or-homerun bullpen wars of attrition back toward some faster-paced offensive excitement, wouldn’t it be much easier, to say nothing of more respectful to roughly 150 years of baseball tradition, simply to coach young hitters to be more like Wagner, Speaker, Hornsby, Cobb, DiMaggio, Williams, Carew, Brett, Boggs, Gwynn and other greats who cared less about launch angles and much more about hitting sharp line drives somewhere, anywhere? Those pure hitters could even content themselves with seeing-eye singles that bounced just beyond the reach of an infielder into the outfield grass. By getting on base, they knew they could apply more pressure to opposing pitchers and fielders than they could while reviewing their last strike-out four times in slo-mo on an iPad in the tunnel.
When even 7th and 8th hitters are now so deluded as to regularly swing up and out of their shoes instead of looking to slap a hit the other way, something — namely the front office infestation of algorithm geeks who’ve never played the game or kissed a girl — has gone terribly wrong.
Radar guns and other action-measuring technologies have evolved, sure. But you and others delude yourselves if you think any of today’s ‘roid boyz are throwing appreciably harder than the Big Train, Bullet Bob, Koufax, Gibson, Ryan and the Big Unit were decades ago. It’s just that today’s dopey .250 hitters have been convinced by the geeks they need to crush 30-plus homeruns a season to be successful. Insanely, they can’t or won’t be satisfied with 18 to 20 round-trippers and a more productive, rally-starting-and-sustaining .300+ batting average.
Pitchers don’t even have to be particularly good or crafty to strike out today’s one-dimensional Herman Munsters who always swing for the fence. In fact, if 87-mph-fastball artist John Tudor were painting the black today and getting hitters waaaay out in front of his 75mph curve, he’d likely average an extra couple of wins per season because batters are so much more likely to swing and miss than to choke up and put the ball in play.
So again, Barry, you really need to get a hold of yourself. The great game doesn’t need new rules or gimmicks. That said, if you want to talk about shaving another five inches off the height of today’s 10-inch mound, just as the Year of the Pitcher in 1968 prompted a shaving from 15 to 10, I and many other fans, I suspect, could be amenable. But 60-feet, 6-inches between the rubber and homeplate is, or ought to be, as sacrosanct as 90-foot basepaths. The only thing our great game needs to be exciting again is more sensible coaching and more versatile hitters willing to get back to baseball basics.
Darren McKinney, Washington, D.C.