Baseball Is Flirting with Disaster
After barely tolerating the concussion screening that every student athlete has to go through, I went home just to be greeted with the news that major league baseball confirmed that it will limit deliberate collisions at home plate this season to avoid head injuries among other possibilities. While this may be in the best interest of player safety, it is a hazard that you are aware about when you sign up to play, as it is in any other sport. However, baseball is a little different. In an era where defense dominates and bores its fans, the MLB should be doing everything in its power to maintain all the excitement it possibly can. Even “The Colbert Report” took advantage of the league’s misguided decision, joking that the collisions “violate baseball’s long-standing ban on action.”
Now technically the rule is only supposed to ban collisions where the runner diverts from scoring to make contact with the catcher who does not have possession of the ball at the time. When the catcher blocks the plate with the ball collisions are still allowed. If contact is still allowed why not just leave it unregulated? There seems to be a growing, unrealistic expectation that catchers should not be hit at all.
It’s just going to create more issues that take away from what makes baseball the national pastime that it is. Umpires will have to use the new video playback option, another problematic idea, to decide which hits are legal and which ones are not. Baseball has become boring enough as it is, watching players get high-fived when they strike out as long as they were able to see five or six pitches in the at bat. Waiting around for a video review is only going to slow down games – if it’s even possible to make the sport any slower.
Pretty soon there are going to be rules not allowing runners to slide in to the guy at second base. If baseball really has the best interest of its fans at heart, those in charge should reconsider. The League needs to let the players play, let the fans get excited about something, and let baseball stay the way that made the sport America’s game.