STOP RULEMAKING

Why do people in charge of sports have an incessant need to tinker with the rules in order make themselves seem important?

Major league baseball is going to experiment with rule changes on how extra inning games will be played in the future.

One of the great assets of baseball is that it is timeless. The basic rules have been in place since its inception. The ebb and flow of the game, with pauses between pitches, makes it the most social of sporting contests. Fans can converse while watching the action. And the foundation of the game is the inning, three outs and winning at nine or extras. Baseball has no time limit. It is one of its greatest charms.

But that will change in an artificially stupid rule which demeans the most sacred aspect of the sport: statistics.

Major League Baseball plans on testing a rule change in the lowest levels of the minor leagues this season that automatically would place a runner on second base at the start of extra innings, a distinct break from the game’s orthodoxy that nonetheless has wide-ranging support at the highest levels of the league, sources familiar with the plan told Yahoo Sports.

A derivation of the rule has been used in international baseball for nearly a decade and will be implemented in the World Baseball Classic this spring. MLB’s desire to test it in the rookie-level Gulf Coast League and Arizona League this summer is part of an effort to understand its wide in-game consequences – and whether its implementation at higher levels, and even the major leagues, may be warranted.

“Let’s see what it looks like,” said Joe Torre, the longtime major league manager who’s now MLB’s Chief Baseball Officer and a strong proponent of the testing. “It’s not fun to watch when you go through your whole pitching staff and wind up bringing a utility infielder in to pitch. As much as it’s nice to talk about being at an 18-inning game, it takes time.

So what? Fans love long, extra inning games. It makes managers work their rosters. It makes players do unprepared things - - - like infielders becoming relief pitchers or relief pitchers playing the outfield.

If MLB is so worried about long games (which must have some basis in their network television contracts), then shorten the game to seven innings (which be abhorrent to traditional fans). No, it must be that television broadcasters want nice, neat and tight 3 hour sports program blocks. But baseball is a round peg that you cannot fit squarely in a box.

This new rule of putting a runner on at second to start an extra inning is stupid. If you have a pitching duel of a zero zero tie after 9, why reward teams by gifting a runner in scoring position? Fans want the pitchers to battle it out to the natural end.

This new rule is as crazy as having the managers come to home plate if a game is tied after 9 innings to play three rounds of rock-paper-scissors. The outcome has little to do with the fundamental principles of the game.