Hold Up, WHAT'S Golden?
MLB Commish Rob Manfred Taking Heat for Proposing Baseball's First, "Golden At-Bat" Rule.
Pop Quiz: Name a major American Sports Commissioner who is well-liked by that sport’s fanbase. I bet you can’t do it. Doesn’t matter if you’re talking about the NBA, NHL, NFL, MLS, or even the WNBA, people always think the head honcho is out to “ruin” the sport they are a part of. That said, there ain’t NOBODY as hated as Major League Baseball Commissioner, Rob Manfred.
Now for me, I actually have a more favorable approach to Manfred. Baseball ain’t perfect, but over the past ten years, I’ve seen strides to make the game more inclusive. I also appreciated the Global Series of games in international locations, the “Let The Kids Play” initiative allowing younger players to show a bit of their personality on the field, and I was a huge fan of the rule changes in advance of the 2023 season. Whether it was the bigger bases, banning the shift, or even the controversial “pitch clock,” you can’t deny it had a net positive on the game. Games went from being an average of 3 plus hours to a cool 2:30, which is important because I don’t even want to buy a ticket to a three-hour movie these days, far less a baseball game. His only innovation I haven’t been a fan of thus far had been the “ghost runner” rule, but I won’t go into that this week.
So there was a MASSIVE controversy this week when the ol’ commish came out and said he was in discussions for baseball to adopt a “Golden At-Bat rule.” Long story short, batters typically hit in a prescribed order that repeats itself during the course of the game. The Golden At-Bat rule would allow managers at one time during a game to bring up ANY batter they so choose, regardless of whether it was their turn to bat or not. Actually, The Athletic (paywall) does a better job of breaking this down:
What if a team could choose one at-bat in every game to send its best hitter to the plate even if it wasn’t that guy’s turn to hit? That’s the Golden At-Bat concept in a nutshell.
Say there are two outs in the 10th inning in October. The Yankees and Guardians are tied. Does this ring a bell at all? But in this alternate October universe, it’s not Juan Soto who is due up. It’s, say, Oswaldo Cabrera. Except the Yankees say: No, no, no. We’re going to use our Golden AB here … and send up Soto. Then home run magic happens. - Jayson Stark (The Athletic)
And so, as you can imagine the reaction was SWIFT. “What’s the point of a lineup if you can just break the lineup?” And “Baseball isn’t built like that.” There may be some truth to the latter. Even though it’s a team sport, it’s not like you can pass the ball to Steph Curry like you could do in basketball. You can’t do a bait & switch like a flea flicker play in football. While I like the idea of trying something new, the Golden At-Bat (soon to be sponsored by Golden Corral or the Golden Arches with a performance from Jurassic 5 singing “What’s Golden?” afterward) rule would fundamentally break the idea that baseball is a team-based sport that CAN’T be lifted by a sole superstar.
In the NBA, there were full seasons where the Lakers just used to “pass it to Kobe.” An individual can’t lead a mediocre baseball team to greatness. There’s too much ground to cover defensively, too many games, and you fail at bat 7 out of 10 times AT BEST. And while we all love the story of the underachieving underdog hitting the walk-off homerun to end a game for the home team, what this rule wants to do is shift that to one or two stars. Because frankly, you’re only going to trust one or two guys if you have that rule at your disposal. And if I can be even more frank, this just sounds like we want to get more at-bats for Shohei Ohtani and Aaron Judge.
But who teams should be calling is ME:
Now I’ll never get the chance! *sobs*
And while I do understand the social media clips that would come from a superstar player being a Golden At-Bat, (and that matters because social media clips are how fans under the age of 21 consume sports anyway), it does give baseball a sort of game show feel that may end up hurting things in the long run. Remember that “Moneyball” thing Baseball United had where any runs hit with it was worth double? Check it:
Fun? Absolutely. Necessary? Jury’s still out on that one. Anyway, the Internet baseball community are freaking out about it, and there’s calls to sound some theoretical alarm to stop the proceedings. I say theoretical because ya really can’t fight City Hall and rando podcasters like myself can’t stop the ol’ Commish.
May I suggest a Platinum At-Bat where certain sports writers get to play in high-leverage games for no particular reason at all…?