Said Max Muncy, who hit the home run that ended the 18-inning World Series game last night. It was the longest post-season game in baseball history. Now, the series is 2-1 and not 3-0, a big deal, considering that "No team has ever come back from a 3-0 hole in a World Series."
In other baseball news, the Wall Street Journal has a no-pay-wall article, "Our Insane Ideas to Save Baseball/Baseball has problems. There aren’t enough hits. There are too many pitchers. The games take too long. So we bullpenned our solutions. Are you ready for Strike Four?" Too long, indeed. And that article was published before the 18-inning World Series game.
And the NYT has a big article on the checked swing: "Baseball Has a Rorschach Test: The Checked Swing/Did the batter hold up in time? Did he actually swing and miss? It depends on your point of view. Well, actually it depends on the umpire’s point of view."
The Major League Baseball rule book does address swings, although the guidance it offers is limited. In the “Definitions and Terms” section, it states that a strike occurs when the pitch “is struck at by the batter and is missed.” But it does not say how far the bat must go to be called a swing....So the rule makes it subjective and requires inquiry into the mind of the batter. That's how West explains it: "That’s why it’s so difficult. It’s subjective. Each swing is different, each checked swing is different." It's not a specific thing done by the bat but what the batter thought he was doing. Can you change your mind in the process and revoke the offer? It makes me want to think of contract law, but if the swinging is offering, you could revoke the offer up until there's an acceptance, but what's the acceptance — something the ball is doing? It seems more like the pitch is the offer and the batter is the one in a position to accept, but that's not how the baseball rule is written, with that "offer at" language.
A.J. Hinch, the manager of the Houston Astros, said... "It’s break the wrist... It’s break the plane of the plate with the bat. Did the bat head come forward?’’
[Boston’s designated hitter, J.D. Martinez], in turn, offered his own interpretation. “Did the bat break the plane of the plate?’’ he said. “Was there intent to hit the ball? To me, if the head of the bat gets in front of the wrists, then you swung."
“You have to determine whether he offered at the pitch,’’ [said veteran umpire Joe West], in reference to the batter. “Or did he actually hold the bat up.”
West’s use of the word “offer” was hardly arbitrary. It comes directly from Rule 5.01(c), which states: “The pitcher shall deliver the pitch to the batter who may elect to strike the ball, or who may not offer at it, as he chooses.’’
"Offer at" feels alien to me, a native speaker of English. The OED defines it as "To make an attempt at or upon; to aim at" and deems it obsolete. I have read it at least once, since I've read "Bleak House," — Dickens, 1853 — which contains the line, "There ain't no danger, gentlefolks..she'd [sc. a cat] never offer at the birds when I was here, unless I told her to it." That sounds like dialect, paired with that "told her to it."
IN THE COMMENTS: policraticus said:
One of my great peeves is the inability of many people today to accept a judgement, even if there is some reason to doubt it, and move on. Perfect Justice does not, indeed cannot exist given our human limitations and fallibility. Part of what made baseball a great sport is that it could live with a certain amount of uncertainty regarding the rules. Bad calls were part of the game. Complaining or arguing calls was also part of the game. Having a brouhaha at home plate and getting tossed for calling the ump a cocksucker was part of the game. Baseball is, perhaps, one of the last great organic expressions of sport. The more we try to shoehorn this ancient accretion of traditions and emotions into a modern digital framework, the less appealing the game will become.
Let baseball be baseball. An 18 inning game is not a bug, it is a feature.
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66 comments:
It seems to me the plate is the strike/ball decider. It should be the swing/not swing decider as well. Break the plane of the plate.
"Offer at" sounds distinctly southern - England and the U.S.
Bring back radio, Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey to save the game.
"Bring back radio, Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey to save the game."
We have that in Milwaukee. Bob Uecker.
"Offer at?" I know it when I see it.
The best estimate is that about 2/3 of the increase in game length in the last 35 years is attributable to players just screwing around between pitches:
https://www.sbnation.com/a/mlb-2017-season-preview/game-length/amp
Ten extra seconds on each pitch adds up. No measure to reduce game length is going to work unless it forces batters to stay in the box and pitchers to throw the ball.
If the home plate umpire does not call it a strike. The catcher and home plate umpire can ask the first base umpire for a right handed hitter, and the third base umpire for a left handed hitter, if the batter "went around", or "broke the plane", and if he did, then a correction for the call will be made. Not a problem.
Ack. Forgot to mention that the first and third base umpires have a better view of what the batter did.
Do whatever they do in cricket, a game that gets around the problem by making no sense at all.
Do not change baseball. That’s one of the reasons why we love it.
I still don’t like how the Brewers and Astros switched leagues.
The new rule for intentionally walking a batter by just awarding him 1st base instead of throwing 4 pitches, was welcomed by me.
So glad I didn't sit through that.
Baseball is a pleasant, slow paced anachronism. In my youth the local small towns all had teams and Sunday afternoons were spent at modest ball fields with chicken wire backstops and snow fence defining the outfield. Many of the players were farm kids for whom baseball was their primary weekend diversion. The fathers cheered from lawn chairs. Games were concluded in time for the evening milking.
One of my great peeves is the inability of many people today to accept a judgement, even if there is some reason to doubt it, and move on. Perfect Justice does not, indeed cannot exist given our human limitations and fallibility. Part of what made baseball a great sport is that it could live with a certain amount of uncertainty regarding the rules. Bad calls were part of the game. Complaining or arguing calls was also part of the game. Having a brouhaha at home plate and getting tossed for calling the ump a cocksucker was part of the game. Baseball is, perhaps, one of the last great organic expressions of sport. The more we try to shoehorn this ancient accretion of traditions and emotions into a modern digital framework, the less appealing the game will become.
Let baseball be baseball. An 18 inning game is not a bug, it is a feature.
"I still don’t like how the Brewers and Astros switched leagues."
And it should be the Milwaukee Braves.
This was fine, until you started quoting Joe West. #retireJoeWest
MLB biding it's time until NFL craters
And all games should be played in the day, as God intended. Oh, and GET OFF MY OUTFIELD!
Damn autocorrect
“And it should be the Milwaukee Braves.”
And it should be the Marquette Warriors.
Re: Milwaukee Braves
The name Atlanta Brewers would not have worked.
The most exciting and tense baseball games are those with the least action. Batters up, batters out, over and over again. I'll watch a 3-2 pitcher's duel over a 12-11 slugfest any day.
Didn't make it through all 18 last night though. Had to go to bed around the 8th. Does that make me a bad Sox fan?
-sw
A while back I watched a World Series game from 1965 or 66, I think. Dodgers and Twins. I wanted to watch Koufax pitch a complete game.
I was surprised how fast he worked. Very different from games today. It was bangbangbang.
As for last night, when you're a pitcher and you're walking off the field and Sandy Koufax gives you a standing ovation, you know you done good.
Last night's game was one of the greatest games ever played.
I woke up mad because I'm not able to watch the World series. I made it through 3 innings game 1, 6 innings last night.
This morning I'm happy.....that I'm not Ian Kinsler.
Go Sox
One thing for sure. Hustling isn't Mannys cup o tea.
I woke up the same feeling I had the morning after the Buckner game in the 1986 World Series. I was never able to watch an important Red Sox game in the same away. Waiting the roof to collapse. I am hoping that's my pre-2004 brain firing its few remaining synapses.
It looks like nearly all of the fans stayed!
Make all fouls strikes.
if you play during the day, as GOD intended; the game is called due to darkness if it goes too long: automatic game limits
Here a joke (with a moral)
Three umpires are sitting at a bar, the youngest says:
There's balls and strikes, and i call 'em as i see 'em
the middle ump says:
There's balls and strikes, and i call 'em as they are
and the oldest and wisest ump says:
Well, There's balls and strikes, but not until i call them
I watched the first inning, had a good nights sleep, woke up and watched the rest of the game.
I'll only agree with one change to the game, and that would be the addition of lasers to determine if a pitch was a ball or a strike. Home plate umpires can ruin a game with bad calls.
I agree with Allen, but then they would have to actually state what the strike zone is. The strike zone, for some umps, is 8 inches off the ground.
Browndog, I know what you're talking about. Watching the rectangular box shown on tv for the strike zone never changes. It's the same size for someone 6'5" as it is for someone 5'6". Have every batter measured before the season, and then adjust the lasers when they step to the plate. Horizontally, knees to whatever. Vertically would never change because those measurements will always be home plate.
I watched until the Red Sox failed to score in the 16th and then gave up and went to bed. Red Sox now hold the record for longest professional baseball game every played and longest World Series game every played.
Two notes about the ball and strike calls, including the checked swings:
1. The umpires were incredibly consistent. For consistency, that was one of the best-called games I've seen.
2. The home plate umpire was giving both pitchers the middle-high outside pitch. The strike zone was an inverted triangle.
rhhardin wrote: Bring back radio
You can't bring back what never went away.
Last night was the first game I've watched on TV all season. I went to one game live at Fenway and listened to a few dozen on the radio.
Well the Atlanta Braves is better than the Atlanta Confederates, at least.
Reminds me of the time I spent 5 hours in a battleground in WoW! oh, wait, that was a video game...
I grew up a baseball addict. I ate, breathed, slept baseball. I hated that football moved ahead of baseball in our culture. I was a baseball apologist, advocate, warrior.
And now it’s meh to me. A lot of things did it but one of the turning points for me was the All-Star came that ended in a tie. Here was a fully mature sport that had become an institution in our culture and they had never decided what to do if an All-Star game went on too long, Bud Selig, the commissioner, made an ad hoc decision to just end it as a tie.
Ashamed by the ugliness of that, the baseball gurus came up with a solution: make the A ll-Star game “count.” Now the winning league would gain home-field advantage in the World Series. Think about that: the brightest minds in the sport came up with a solution to a too-long All-Star game that did not address the problem. At all. Period.
They could have instituted a player re-entry Rule, like high school baseball has. That would have solved the loss of useable players problem. Or they could have said, after ten innings or however many, if still tied, we have a “shootout,” like hockey. The shootout would have been a fan favorite: a home run derby. Or they could have simply said, after ten innings, a tie is a tie.
None of these. Instead the idiotic non-solution which now they have dropped because the American League wins every year.
This marked for me an end of any vestige of faith I had in the brains of institutions. And this is why I was able to jump on the Trump train.
So in the end, you see again, everything is about Trump.
Please keep the WSJ and the rest of MSM out of telling MLB how to play baseball. It's not like professional media is a growing and successful industry that it can now provide advice to other industries.
I will say MLB does have a problem playing games in the middle of the night. They should start West Coast games during the day. A 1pm start would be 4pm on the East Coast. Then that game would have ended at 8:30pm PDT and just before midnight in Boston. I'm sure this is because Fox doesn't want MLB messing up their entire daytime lineup, but MLB should just skip the middleman and offer their games direct to viewers.
“The pitcher shall deliver the pitch to the batter who may elect to strike the ball, or who may not offer at it, as he chooses.’’
Reminded me of -
And the Lord spake, saying, "First shalt thou take out the Holy Pin. Then, shalt thou count to three. No more. No less. Three shalt be the number thou shalt count, and the number of the counting shall be three. Four shalt thou not count, nor either count thou two, excepting that thou then proceed to three. Five is right out. Once the number three, being the third number, be reached, then, lobbest thou thy Holy Hand Grenade of Antioch towards thy foe, who, being naughty in My sight, shall snuff it."
I just want to say one word to you. Just one word. Lasers.
AllenS said: The new rule for intentionally walking a batter by just awarding him 1st base instead of throwing 4 pitches, was welcomed by me.
Not by me!! It took something away from the game. There have been times when the pitcher made a bad throw which resulted in a pause ball and a runner was able to advance. I think there have been a few instances in which the pitcher threw the ball too close to the plate and the batter reached out and got some wood on it. There should be four balls thrown for a walk, not just waving the player on base.
I also absolutely detest the designated hitter in the American League. Again, that took something very important away from the game. If the game is tight, it's a late inning, the batting team has runners on base, it's 1 or 2 outs, they're behind a run or two, and the pitcher - who has thrown a gem up to that point, despite being a run or two behind - is coming to bat, do you let him bat or send in a pinch hitter and go to a reliever? That kind of decision is gone in the AL. Which is one of the reasons I mainly follow the NL.
And I am in total agreement with the comment by policraticus. I hate the video review. Uncertainty and arguing calls was a great part of the game, that's gone now, to some extent.. Get rid of these "improvements" and the game will be fine.
"passed ball" not "pause ball". Darned autocorrect.
The hardest change to accept over the last few years has been Vin Scully's retirement. This may have been one of the all time great championship games (although I missed the second half), but it would have been sublime if Scully were calling it.
Bad calls were part of the game.
What I remember most about George Brett's career is pine tar incident.
They could try shortening the game by not playing so damn many commercials.
Speaking of the Milwaukee Braves:
Did you notice that the Dodgers played, in order, Atlanta, Milwaukee, Boston.
All homes of the Braves.
"Let baseball be baseball."
Fine, if baseball doesn't want anyone watching a whole game.
Watched it almost to the bitter end and woke up on the sofa just after it was over. Had to go to my phone to find out the result. Though I'm pulling for Boston, I'm glad the Dodgers won this one. They know now what they're up against and how perilously close they are to another WS loss.
However the game is run, a big problem is how the owners/MLB control content. No one gives a shit about the game because no one gives a shit about the players. MLB is all about protecting the TV contracts and the message. They are killing the game.
A while back I watched a World Series game from 1965 or 66, I think. Dodgers and Twins. I wanted to watch Koufax pitch a complete game.
I was surprised how fast he worked. Very different from games today. It was bangbangbang.
You know it's gotten bad when they show commercials between pitches.
I watched the entire game, and it is the first baseball game I have watched from beginning to end in at least a decade or more- can't quite remember. It was a great game overall- some truly amazing twists. Like I wrote last night in the Cafe thread, I found myself pulling for the Dodgers, a team I loathed as a child growing up. I think I just see them as the underdog here- kind of like Trump in 2016.
Couldn't get past all the polluting coal/oil required to keep all those lights on.Not to mention tens of thousands of automobiles poisoning the air to and from the game. Sure, go ahead and kill Mother Earth and every living thing on her just to keep you guys entertained.
You people don't know how ridiculous you are.
Am I right?
I wanted to watch Koufax pitch a complete game.
I am lucky that I did. It was Koufax vs. Denny Lemaster in Atlanta. Couldn't have gone better if you were a Braves fan. Both pitchers went the distance with Koufax giving up a game winning homer in the bottom of the 9th to my favorite, Eddie Mathews.
Lemaster did one better by only giving up 3 hits to Koufax's 4.
It was all over in 2 hours. (Actually 2:19 according to this box score).
PS. Atlanta fans wanted the team to change its name to the Atlanta Rebels. We really wanted a Rebels vs. Yankees World Series.
mockturtle said: "You know it's gotten bad when they show commercials between pitches."
They went from about 13-14 seconds between pitches 35 years ago to 24 seconds now. They were bound to figure out eventually that you could fit a 15-second in there.
West Coast. Watched it all.
Go Blue.
Saw a stat this morning. Looked it up. It's accurate.
Last night's game was longer (seven hours, 20 minutes) than the entire 1939 World Series (seven hours, five minutes).
The Red Sox came back from a 3-0 deficit to beat the Yankees in the 2004 ALCS. So they know it can happen. Maybe that's why Alex Cora looked so tense and miserable last night. But then, I think he always looks tense and miserable.
Am I right?
Damned right, FullMoon! We sports fans should be deeply ashamed of ourselves. While enjoying the series. From the comfort of our living rooms.
CTmom4 observes: Maybe that's why Alex Cora looked so tense and miserable last night. But then, I think he always looks tense and miserable.
I've noticed that, too.
The game could be sped up by deleting the horrid ad breaks between innings and during pitching changes. If a reliever comes in, assume he's warmed up in the bullpen. Two warm-up pitches on the mound and then back to action. Same thing for the top and middle of an inning: the defense gets to the field, one minute to throw the ball around and then"play ball!" Ideas to keep batters in the box are also welcome.
Maybe the networks are dictating these long intervals.
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