It’s no secret baseball has been tweeking rules to speed up the game and hopefully result in growing interest in the next generation of fans.
I’ll admit I’m old. Baseball doesn’t need to change. Never has. Never should.
I miss AL and NL with two divisions and one wild card. But that’s the equivalent of Lewis and Clark exploring the Missouri River in terms of baseball history. A lot of water is under the bridge. So I type this out knowing full well I’m either going to adapt and change or be left to fend for myself looking at stats on the back of Wade Boggs cards.
But I can’t quit baseball without explaining how the home run and strike out are mostly the cause. HR & K. About as key to the history of baseball as the canoe and horse were to Merriweather and William. The home run and strikeout were there in the beginning and will be there in the end. But when I read this about Miggy “all or nothing” Sano.
He’s already the Twins’ all-time leader in two-strikeout games (325), three-strikeout games (106) and four-strikeout games (18), and ranks third in franchise history in career strikeouts behind Harmon Killebrew (1,314) and Joe Mauer (1,034), each of whom played more than three times as many Twins games as Sano has.
It cemented his legacy and my future. I’m going down swinging too. Baseball is so in love with a HR that baseball just looks away to the failure of the strikeouts.
Tony Gwynn was “my guy” in the 1980s. Between 1982 and 2021 he had 45 four hit games. He struck out twice in a game. 34 times. Most of the time I check the box score I see 2k from Miggy more often than not. I’m numb to his K. So is the rest of baseball.
The problem is the real baseball of hit and run and stolen base of 30 years ago has been replaced in this new era by exit velocity, barrel speed, and launch angle.
Fans want to watch a 495 moon shot from Miggy and don’t care if he strikes out his other three times up. It seems managers and GMs are okay with it as well.
I’m not.
I’ll be just fine and maybe baseball will be too……
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