Doubleday Field ~ Cooperstown, NY
Thank you, Darrell Pittman, for being the friendship gift that simply keeps on giving to our understanding and focus upon issues that now effect our game of baseball in ways that will likely continue at a relentless pace. Are going to protect our beautiful game’s independence from the clock and replace it with time measured and limited possibility?
Are we going to simply stand by and watch the game of baseball get gang-flanked by an ego-bushel of opportunistic “executives” in the Commissioner’s Office ~ corporate minds who think as veiled scoundrels who would gladly sell-out the foundation of baseball for the benefit of their own personal advancements.
Everyone who cares about the preservation of the game needs to read this incisive article by Alexandra Desanctis for the National Review about the tenet issues that are at stake here:
Major League Baseball’s Identity Crisis | National Review
In brief, the author’s final two paragraphs sum it up very well:
“There’s a faction of baseball fans who never want to see any changes to their sport — many still mourn the decades-old decision to introduce the designated hitter in the American League. But for even less diehard fans, it isn’t clear what problem these alterations are meant to solve. If anything, fans are more concerned about rising rates of strikeouts and home runs than they are about pace of play, yet these concerns receive comparatively little attention. *
“Baseball’s identity crisis exists not because the game is ill-suited to modern times, but because the people in charge care more about catering to people who will never love baseball — no matter how fast the game might fly — than they do about satisfying the fans they already have.”
* Hours after after this article was written, on March 28, 2019, the Los Angeles Dodgers set a new MLB record by hitting 8 home runs on Opening Day.
Thank you for your clairvoyant brilliance, Ms. Desanctis!
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Bill McCurdy
Principal Writer, Editor, Publisher
The Pecan Park Eagle 
March 29, 2019 at 2:57 pm |
Thanks, Bill, for the tip on Alexandra Desantis’s wonderful column. She hit a home run. It drives me crazy when the commissioner refers to baseball not as our great game or the national pastime, but as a “product.”