Opinion | Let baseball be baseball again

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Once again the monthlong slog of Major League Baseball playoffs is upon us, since baseball is yet again doing its worst to copy the eternal playoff systems that have come to dominate our sporting scene. Worst of all, at least for some, baseball is once again doing its best to interfere with the early heat of the football season. Heck, before a World Series champion is crowned, baseball will be competing with basketball for our sporting attention.

Meanwhile, for better than two decades now, baseball has also been doing its worst to transform itself into what amounts to a barely pastoral version of football. Remember that old George Carlin routine about the differences between baseball and football? In football it’s the “blitz and the bomb,” while in baseball it’s the “sacrifice.” Well, forget it. The sacrifice is long forgotten, or at least as a play-by-play announcer might call an impending home run, it’s “going, going, gone.” And the “blitz and the bomb?” In a sense, both are now very much with us in both sports. Certainly the bomb is.

The irony of all of this is inescapable. Let’s face it. Football has clearly replaced baseball as America’s game. Does anyone doubt that fact of our modern sports-spectating lives? I don’t. And just how has baseball responded to this inconvenient truth? By trying to become more like football. It’s not just a futile pursuit, but a misguided one as well.

Who or what should be blamed for this turn of events? How about one of each? More specifically, how about Earl Weaver for the “who” and the analytics revolution for the “what?” That would be Baltimore Orioles manager Earl Weaver, who thought that the secret to winning baseball was good pitching, good defense and the three-run homer.

Maybe a second villain could be another “who,” as in Michael Lewis, author of “Moneyball,” which helped give birth to the analytics revolution. Numbers, ah, numbers. The beauty of baseball has long been numbers. Runs, hits and errors. So far, so good. BAs, RBIs, ERAs, SBs and OBPs. So far, still OK. But baseball’s eternal – and infernal – preoccupation with numbers is now contributing to the ruination of the game.

And scouts? Who needs them? Reading numbers on a computer can take care of that ancient business.

The timeless game of baseball now has a pitch clock. The current game is apparently too long and too boring. Maybe the next step will be a time limit for each inning, complete with a two-minute warning — and not at the end of each half, but at the end of each half-inning. Think of the drama that could be ginned up.

The potential drama now is confined to waiting for the next home run. To be sure, there might not be a blitz of them, but there could be a bomb. That’s the essence of the modern game, which also means a lot of strikeouts and a lot of walks — and a lot of pitches and a lot of waiting.

Once upon a time baseball fans weren’t so much waiting as anticipating. The game was all about moving runners around the bases. Therefore, between pitches with at least one runner on base it only appeared that nothing was happening. Actually, a whole lot was happening, whether in the manager’s mind or in the players’ minds or in the fan’s mind. And football? When nothing is happening, well, nothing is happening.

The minds who run baseball ought to keep in mind two things they seem to have forgotten. In the first place, baseball ain’t football; and in the second place, baseball shouldn’t try to become like football — or should that be football-lite?

In a recent book titled “Make Me Commissioner,” Jane Leavy, biographer of the Babe, the Mick and a pitcher by the name of Koufax, expresses her thanks that baseball came into being in the 19th century, because it would never be invented today.

So what should baseball do today? Let baseball be baseball. Better yet, baseball needs a devolution rather than a revolution. We could start by going back to one best-of-seven World Series in early October between the two best teams. A full season of 162 games ought to have figured that much out. And then the world, or at least a decent chunk of it, might then stop and pay serious attention.

Leavy has an interesting proposal as well. Install plexiglass 30 feet high from the left field foul line to the right field foul line. In other words, let there be a see-through Fenway Park green monster that stretches across the entire outfield in every ballpark. Cheap home runs would then become long singles, or maybe nail-biting doubles, or possibly crazed mad-dash triples.

The idea itself seems crazy. But is it? It would encourage hitters to put the ball in play rather than out of the field of play. The result should be more action on the base paths, rather than a lot of standing near a base or in the batter’s box — or either walking to first or back to the dugout.

Baseball could still experience the annual postseason orgy/parade of firings. But instead of dismissing just the manager (witness the Twins’ recent parting of ways with Rocco Baldelli), it could mean that it’s time to get rid of the analytics crew as well. On second thought, only fire them. After all, today’s managers are now little more than puppets of front-office number-crunchers.

Baseball as it used to be. What a concept! Who knows, but there might be an old-fashioned strike or lockout come spring. Maybe there won’t be any baseball for a good long while. And then maybe, just maybe, those who claim to care about the game will finally come to their senses and return baseball to the game it once was.

Will baseball then knock football off its current pedestal? Probably not. But at least baseball will once again be baseball.