Mac Engel: MLB's potential 'Golden At-Bat' rule is the thinking baseball needs more of, not less

Mac Engel, Fort Worth Star-Telegram on Dec 14, 2024

Published in Baseball

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DALLAS — Baseball does not need a “Golden At-Bat” to stimulate our senses, but the brainstorming session that proposed such a stupid rule needs to continue.

For this reason.

“Baseball is an entertainment product,” Texas Rangers general manager Chris Young said to a small gathering of reporters during the annual winter meetings.

Start every discussion about Major League Baseball with that fact and you’re going to reach the conclusion much quicker.

All anyone would need to do was to walk through the lobby of the Hilton Anatole hotel in Dallas this week to assess the health of baseball, and MLB. The place was packed with out-of-town media from all over the world to cover the meetings.

A professional league that is routinely classified as “dead” makes hundreds of millions. Its highest paid players make as much, and often more, than those in the NBA, NFL or NHL and the rest.

This has not stopped current MLB commissioner Rob Manfred from morphing into what critics paint him as the baseball devil; another suit whose expertise is labor law, doesn’t respect the game, and wants to “ruin it.”

He isn’t great in front of a mic’. He can come off as an aloof, tone deaf New York City lawyer. At least someone within MLB is pushing to tinker with a product that needs it. Because all of them do.

“I’ll say this, as a manager, or player, we’re always looking to get better. You’re always looking for ways to make the game better,” Rangers manager Bruce Bochy said this week during the meetings. “Tinkering it a little bit is fine; you have to draw a line somewhere. This ‘Golden Rule?’ That’s a good place to draw one.”

It’s been drawn. It should not mean Manfred and MLB put down their pencils.

“The Golden At-Bat” would, in theory, allow a manager to put his hitter of choice at the plate, one time, at any point. The proposal, which was something that was casually discussed and never reached any formal stage in the rule-change process, was effectively dismissed by Manfred this week. It’s not happening, nor should it.

What should happen is the willingness, and eagerness, to make baseball, and specifically, MLB a more appealing product. It doesn’t matter if the leader is Rob Manfred or Rob Zombie, baseball needs people who push for tinkering.

No one thinks MLB and its teams should become the Savannah Bananas, but for decades baseball’s leadership was paralyzed with the belief that Reds v. Cardinals in the middle of July was good enough. Because for decades it was. The NHL ran into this issue, too.

It didn’t help that the MLB Player’s Association would routinely delay even the tiniest modification.

Eventually, two years ago MLB forced the game to enact a pitch clock, a three-batter minimum for relief pitchers, limits on pick-off attempts, larger bases, the extra-inning ghost runner and limits on defensive shifts.

An MLB game is a better product, for this generation, as a result.

“One of the best things we did was put in the pitch clock,” Bochy said. “The pace of the game, the action, everything about it has worked. It reminds me when I broke in (to MLB) in the late ‘70s. The pace of the game is faster. That has been good.

“It’s been good for the players. It keeps them fresher; the game is a little shorter. They’re not on their legs so much. Some of the (changes), I’m not as fond of; the three-batter minimum. I’ve gotten used to it. The man on the second (to start extra innings), the players seem to like it. It’s shortened games. I’m good with that. I think it’s a better game, in my mind, there’s no doubt.”

More than any other sport, baseball is loaded with devout purists who welcome changes to the game almost as much as they would celebrate an increase on their taxes. They’re going to watch baseball, regardless of how it looks.

These are the same people who howled in disgust when MLB embraced inter league play in 1997; it was an overdue alteration to a stale schedule.

They will rip any modification because it’s not played the way it was when life was perfect, when they were younger. They’re going to verbally assault anyone who thinks moving the on-deck circle three inches to the left is to destroy not just America’s pasttime, but America itself.

“I don’t see (the Golden At-Bat) happening. You’re always trying to make the game better,” Bochy said, “but I don’t see where this does.”

A Golden At-Bat morphs a bit too far into Savannah Banana territory.

Baseball is still a great game. There are still few things in sports as much fun as standing in a batter’s box and trying to hit a pitch.

Despite the games unique place in the evolution of this country, that doesn’t mean it’s above change because baseball is ultimately an entertainment product.