Make Me Commissioner

Baseball was a lot more fun when you could believe in clutch hitting.

But the game that promises you might see something that’s never happened before devolved into one lacking variety, nuance, subtlety, and strategy. “It’s so fucking boring,” the great Bill “Spaceman” Lee said. “You know why it’s so fucking boring? Because everyone knows what’s going to happen. Somebody is gonna hit a home run and the closer is going to strike out the side in the ninth.”

The joy of baseball is in not knowing

Palmer answered with a story about a visit to the Diamondbacks where he watched a hot, young phenom throw to former Orioles catcher Caleb Joseph. “He threw thirty pitches and when he finishes, he goes right over to the iPad and asked the young pitching instructor, ‘What do you think?’ And the guy goes, ‘God, your spin rates were great, the shape of your pitches was fabulous.’ “And then he turned to Caleb and said, ‘What do you think?’ Caleb said, ‘I thought you really sucked. You hit my glove twice in thirty-five pitches.’”

“If you really want to solve for the strikeout issue, they’re going to have to change the baseball to change the physics so that balls don’t move as much or go as fast,” Jason said. “To me, that’s the solution.”

pitching coach Dave Wallace had to say about transcending the old guy/young guy schism. “Older guys like me have to stop being so fucking thickheaded and stop saying, ‘No, that stuff doesn’t matter, it’s no good,’” Dave said. “And the young, pompous little assholes that come up and think they know it all have to get over themselves.”

Baseball lives at the intersection of history, memory, and nostalgia, which are “different things,” Janet Marie reminded me. She is clear-eyed about the pull of the opposing constituencies that makes her job complicated. That is: to preserve and celebrate the past without wallowing in it. She knows that nostalgia is death to something trying to live in the present

What the moment called for, what baseball in its current iteration lacks, what the future demands, is what Ellis called “situational dexterity.” That may be the best call he ever made. There have to be allowances. In the moment, for the moment, for the person of the moment. “Metrics means that there’s no deviation ever for what’s not the norm,” said Rich Hill. “And when you have a great player like Kershaw, it’s never the norm.” ... Situational dexterity would require planning and contingencies and trusting baseball eyes. Intuition used to be relevant information.

“We got to condition the cognitive side too, controlling your breath and staying under control. ‘Don’t get agitated when things don’t go your way, and when they’re poking at you, don’t buy into it. Sometimes you experience racism, you can’t let it get you off balance. So, when they do take a shot at you, you got that bulletproof armor where the bullet just bounces right back off.’” Note: Same for anti-semitism

one-third of all at bats since 2017 have ended in one of the dreaded Three True Outcomes. And that explains why despite the changes imposed in 2023, baseball feels so static. “So, basically, it’s a faster version of the same game,” I said. “Or as Buck Showalter put it, ‘It’s just boring faster.’”

Leo Mazzone, who coached the Braves pitching staff from 1990 through 2005, encountered parental ambition at one such tournament. “A mother comes up to me and says, ‘My husband and I are working on my son’s mental game.’ “I said, ‘Yeah? How old is he?’ “She said, ‘Ten.’ “I looked at her and said, ‘Do you know, ma’am, that he doesn’t have a clue what the hell you’re talking about?’ “Then I stopped myself because what I wanted to say was, ‘You and your husband need to work on your mental game.’”

“You need to survey the land,” he told players in San Francisco. “Look where the center fielder is playing. Look where the left fielder is standing. That’s how they’re going to pitch you.”

“There’s people who make adjustments at bat to at bat,” he said. “And there’s people who make adjustments game to game. The best players are the ones that can make adjustments pitch to pitch. Once I feel it, once I get it, I have the ability to repeat it often.”

“In baseball you gotta sacrifice,” he said. “Had to,” I replied. “It’s the only game that starts out at home and ends up at home,”