What’s Missing From "the Dodgers are Ruining Baseball" Discussion
Why logic, of course, but what else?
Baseball wasn’t ruined in 1880 when it was declared that a base on balls would occur on “eight balls instead of nine” — no joke — nor was it ruined two years later when seven balls instead of eight would do the trick. This bit of weirdness from 1887 didn’t ruin baseball either: “Batter no longer allowed to call for a high or low pitch. Base on balls on five balls. Strikeout on four strikes instead of three, where the first called strike did not count.”
The abolishment of the spitball in 1920 was a big change, certainly, but it didn’t ruin baseball. The lowering of the mound in 1968, the institution of the designated hitter in 1973, several rounds of expansion, the same. Two divisions in each h league, three divisions in each league, a tie in the All-Star Game leading to the winning league being awarded home field in the World Series, the steroid scandal, the cheating Astros scandal, the same, the same, the same and the same. Bud Selig couldn’t ruin baseball, Rob Manfred couldn’t either and the pitch clock turned out to be just the shot in the arm the game needed. The sky isn’t falling, the sky never falls and I’m quite sure that minus a rover, a fifth base and a second mound all being instituted at once, baseball won’t be ruined at any time in your lifetime.
What’s missing from “the Dodgers are ruining baseball” discussion is the notion that
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