I Don't Think Rob Manfred Likes Baseball Very Much

Major League Baseball formally announced that the independent Atlantic League would be experimenting with a number of potential changes which could take place in MLB. These changes include moving the pitching mound back two feet to 62 feet, 6 inches from home plate, robot umpires to assist in calling balls and strikes, a ban on shifts and widening the bases from 15 to 18 inches. I'm not sure why Manfred doesn't install a field goal post in center field.

I suppose we can be grateful they aren't putting runners on first and second during extra inning games as was done in the World Baseball Classic in 2017. But this simply annoys me to no end.

It annoys me because it tells me that MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred doesn't like baseball very much. All we have been hearing about from Manfred since he became Commissioner in 2015 is pace of play and pace of game. In 2018, Manfred called pace of play "a fan issue." In all the years I've been watching baseball, I've never seen a fan tell me they watched a game at the ballpark, on TV or listened to it on the radio tell me that it was too long. But when you repeat something often enough people accept it as fact. Sports Illustrated was too busy complaining how long World Series games between the Red Sox and Dodgers were as compared to when they last faced off in the Fall Classic in 1916 to appreciate what was in front of them.

From where I sit, Manfred is a bureaucrat and bureaucrats like to give the appearance of being busy and doing something when it usually makes things worse than they were. During my lifetime, there have been three significant changes to the game - the DH rule, interleague play and instant replay. I could easily do without the first two.

There is nothing fundamentally wrong with the way baseball is played. By its very geometry, it is different from football, basketball, hockey, soccer and tennis. The game takes place in a diamond where the defense has the ball. Because of that the pace isn't as fast as the other sports, but it can be depending on the given day. To me that is the beauty of baseball. Every game has its own rhythm within the confines of the diamond and there is no need to disrupt that rhythm or the diamond.

Of course, Manfred isn't the first busybody Commissioner bought and paid for by shortsighted owners. Yet as baseball historian Glenn Stout once said, "Baseball will survive the idiots who run it." I suppose the same can be said of America. But it was George Harrison who sang, "All things must pass away."

Baseball has been one of the few consistent joys of my life. In a life where I have seldom known where I stand from one day to the next, I have always taken comfort in knowing the pitcher's mound is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. I have a bad feeling that sense of comfort shall soon disappear.