Aside from the fiasco that was the planned and needless demolition of the Oakland Athletics and a few other speed bumps, Major League Baseball is roaring into the second quarter of the twenty-first century in fine shape. This is somewhat surprising, as prices for everything from tickets and parking spaces to the fabled but generally mediocre hot dogs are at confiscatory, take-out-a-second-mortgage levels. Nevertheless, overall attendance was higher than it has been since 2017. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, however, is not satisfied and thinks a new rule will send attendance even higher and draw a new generation of fans to the grand old game. The only problem is that the proposed rule is the stupidest ever in the history of any sport played anywhere.
It's called the “Golden At-Bat.” You might think this means giving up unto others the hits that they give up unto you, but it is actually the idea of allowing each team the chance to bring up to bat anyone it wants at any point in the game.
This can only happen once per team in each game, but it could mean that a team’s big hitter, someone on the order of Shohei Ohtani or Aaron Judge, could come up to bat, hit a home run, and then, in a crucial situation, be called back to the plate immediately to be the next hitter. Or maybe, if you know that a particular hitter hits a given pitcher as if it were batting practice but he won’t be coming to bat this inning, you can bring him in for a Golden At-Bat to try to spark a rally.
It sounds like the kind of rule kids playing baseball in somebody’s backyard would make up, and there’s nothing wrong with that on its face. Baseball is a kids’ game anyway, so why not make it more fun for everyone by increasing the chance of a dramatic encounter between a premier pitcher and a hitter of equal skill at a crucial moment?
The chief problem with the new rule is that it doesn’t appear to realize one of the things that makes baseball so great is that it gives players who aren’t on the level of Ohtani or Judge multiple opportunities to shine. Some of the greatest moments in baseball history don’t involve the greatest players of the day, but rather some average or even marginal player who rises to the occasion and has a moment of glory.
Examples of this could be multiplied endlessly, but being a baseball fan of a certain age, I remember when Gene Tenace, a catcher who had hit .225 with five home runs during the 1972 regular season, suddenly channeled Babe Ruth and hit four home runs for the Oakland A’s during the 1972 World Series against the Cincinnati Reds, the formidable Big Red Machine of Pete Rose, Joe Morgan, Tony Perez, and Johnny Bench. If the Golden At-Bat rule had been in place then, Tenace might not have come to bat at all. Future Hall of Famer Reggie Jackson was injured and did not play in that series, but the A’s had several better hitters than Tenace and might have figured their chances were better than those of their light-hitting catcher.
A few years later, the Boston Red Sox and the New York Yankees both finished the regular season with 99 wins and 63 losses, and they met in a one-game playoff to determine which team would go on to the postseason. In the top of the seventh inning, with the Yankees trailing 2-0 and pennant hopes dancing in Crimson Hose fans’ heads, the Yankees’ number-nine hitter, shortstop Bucky Dent, hit a three-run home run over the left field Green Monster in Fenway Park, and it was the Yankees, not the Red Sox, who advanced to the playoffs.
Related: Elegy for the Oakland Athletics
If the Golden At-Bat rule had been in place, Dent might never have made it to the batter’s box in that situation. The Yankee lineup had Reggie Jackson, Thurman Munson, and a host of other heavy hitters. And one of them might have done well in a Golden At-Bat situation at that point. Or he might not have. After all, not every great hitter always produces in a clutch situation, and not every light hitter becomes formidable in a moment of high tension. Plenty of both have failed. That, however, is what makes moments when there is an unlikely hero all the more riveting. And the strategic dilemma that a manager faces when he has to decide whether to pinch-hit for someone at a key moment is part of what makes the game so interesting.
The Golden At-Bat rule risks doing exactly the opposite of what Rob Manfred hopes it will do: it will remove from the game one of the foremost ways in which it generates drama and moments that fans remember for a lifetime. (For better or worse, some older fans in Boston still refer to Bucky Dent by the full name by which he came to be known in Beantown, Bucky F. Dent.) If draining the game of its remarkable character and making it dull is what Manfred is after, he should institute this rule. He is already embarked on introducing the participation-trophy everybody-wins ethic into the game, greatly expanding the playoff field until the postseason looks like the NCAA basketball tournament, enlarging the bases so that it’s harder to, you know, get somebody out, and generally tinkering in ways that drive those who loved the game as it was straight up the wall.
This time, however, it’s not just that old hidebound traditionalists like me hate change. The change Manfred is proposing will make the game worse while not drawing any new moths to the flame. This guy should resign and take a job as general manager of the Homeless Athletics or something else that is more suited to his visionary temperament.
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