PITTSBURGH — When did everybody become an embittered sportswriter?

Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred recently floated the idea of letting one hitter receive an extra at-bat, out of order — a "golden at-bat" — and fans are reacting like sanctimonious scribes blocking Barry Bonds from the Hall of Fame. They're acting like Manfred suggested ghost runners should appear on second base in extra innings.

Wait, that's already happening?

Are we going to pretend that baseball doesn't have a long history of radical, revolutionary rule changes? Are we all aware that the let's-randomly-replace-a-bad-hitter-with-a-good-one rule already happened 50 years ago, with the advent of the designated hitter?

This idea actually sounds fun, should it come to pass. It sounds entertaining. It sounds like an acknowledgment that America's attention span is shrinking faster than the Cleveland Browns' playoff hopes and that people live for TikTok moments. Like, say, Shohei Ohtani getting an extra at-bat to face Aroldis Chapman with the bases loaded in the eighth.

Who wouldn't want to see Ohtani or Aaron Judge for a few more swings? More to the point, who would be harmed or offended by this? The so-called baseball "purists?"

L.O.L.

What is a baseball purist, anyway? Is it the same as a traditionalist or an originalist? Other than keeping Bonds and Roger Clemens out of the Hall of Fame for cheating, even though cheating has been part of baseball's DNA for 150 years, what do they stand for?

Do they want the game played as its creators intended?

OK, then they must want nine balls for a walk — that was the original rule — and four strikes for a strikeout, the way it used to be. (Imagine the Pirates bullpen working under those conditions; games would never end).

Foul balls didn't count as strikes until 1901. Must have been pretty revolutionary when they changed that rule. Do the purists want it back? How about the mound 10 feet closer and a foot higher, like it used to be in the good old days?

As a "purist," which era, in particular, do you want baseball to preserve? The 1940s? The 80s? I'd love to know. And I'm guessing you're aware that all the aforementioned rules and many after were instituted capriciously, like all rules in sports. Like the golden at-bat would be.

I mean, I'll bet "three strikes" sounded pretty fanatical at the time. Somebody decided it was better than four, or two, and then it became sacred.

In that vein, and for those who speak of the golden at-bat as "too gimmicky," consider this: Somebody woke up one day and decided to paint a line on a basketball court and say, "From now on, all shots made from behind this line count for three points instead of two." Somebody else decided hockey games could be decided by a breakaway contest, that college football overtimes would take the form of mini-games from the 25-yard line and that the forward pass should finally be legalized in pro football after years without it (I'm guessing football purists hated that rule).

Somebody decided in 1994 that NFL teams could suddenly try for two points, instead of just one, after touchdowns. The actual mathematics of the game was changed forever. Talk about gimmicky.

But we're used to it now.

We'd be outraged if they got rid of it. In all sports, what once seemed ridiculous is now normal and vice-versa. I'm pretty sure we'd all survive an extra at-bat for Ohtani. We might even like it.

As mentioned, this wouldn't even be the first time baseball made a wild rule change to replace a bad hitter with a good one. I'd argue that the first instance was way more extreme: After 100 years of mandating that everybody in the field had to hit, the American League suddenly decided in 1973 that a player who was otherwise picking splinters from his behind could bat for the pitcher all game.

That's at least as radical as somebody batting out of order one time.

Shoot, this wouldn't even be the most out-there rule change of the past five years. I'm not sure if you noticed, Mr. and Mrs. Baseball Purist, but four years ago, they made a rule where apparitions suddenly appeared from figurative rows of corn — just like in "Field of Dreams" — and took up residence on second base at the start of the 10th inning.

You might also have noticed that Manfred became the first person to put a time clock on baseball, that bases are now the size of pizza boxes, that a relief pitcher must face at least three batters and that for the first time since the sport was invented, teams can no longer configure their defense as they see fit.

But batting one guy out of order is a bridge too far?

I don't particularly like Manfred's style, but I laud him for realizing that only highly progressive thinking is going to give this sport a chance to preserve its future. It is an old, slow game desperately trying to survive a sped-up world. It's sad in a way, but Manfred's changes have worked to shorten games and liven them up. This would be another step in that direction.

I think we'd all survive.

We might even enjoy it.

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