No More Extra Innings Next Season
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Borrowing a page from soccer's World Cup Tournament and the National Hockey League, Major League Baseball announced today that beginning with the 2007 season, baseball games that are tied after nine innings will be limited to one extra inning. If the game is still tied after the extra inning, the winner will be determined by a Home Run Derby. Each team will select one player to be the batter and one of the batter's teammates will be his pitcher. Each batter will have ten swings until one team has won.
Baseball owners, executives, and managers were delirious with delight. No longer will managers be forced to use their pitching staff for more than ten innings on any given day. No longer will managers be put in the untenable position of using closers for more than 2 innings. No longer will games drag on and on, as recently occurred in a 19 inning contest between the White and Red Sox. No longer will fans miss dinner or sleep because a game that was designed to last 9 innings remains tied for 25 innings, as was the case in a 1975 night game between the Cardinals and Mets.
Fans want scoring because scoring runs is exciting and hitting home runs is more thrilling than seeing a boring 1-0 or 2-1 pitching duel in which nothing happens except for an occasional drag bunt single, a stolen base, a strike out with a runner on third and fewer than two outs, or a leaping catch in the outfield that saves a run. In a high scoring game, the leaping catch that saves a run is probably saving a run that isn't needed anyway. What's another run in an 11-7 game anyway? Does it matter if the final score is 12-7 or 11-8?
Sudden Death Home Run Derby will have modern fans rooting for tie games. They will be sitting at the edge of their box seats at the ball park or at the edge of their recliners at home in the hope of seeing their team's best slugger lead them to a sudden death victory.
Instead of questioning whether a manager should order a sacrifice bunt after a tenth inning lead off single, fans will question which batter the manager selected to hit, and equally important, which player he selected to pitch to the home run hitter. Instead of agonizing over a runner barely being thrown out at home plate on a fantastic throw from the outfield, fans will aggravate themselves over a fly ball that hits the fence and bounces back onto the field for an "out."
Purists will argue that the Home Run Derby Rule will ruin the game but they are wrong, as usual. The Designated Hitter Rule has revolutionized the game. The National League is organized baseball's only league that does NOT use the DH. It is the only league in which a pitcher such as Dontrelle Willis can hit a grand slam home run to help win his own game or Roy Oswalt can pinch hit and double. That would never happen with the DH.
Purists decry the fact that any pitch above the belt is not called a strike despite the rule book definition of a strike. But that has allowed batters to avoid swinging at such pitches, increasing their efficiency. Purists decried the lowering of the pitching mound after the debacle that was the 1968 season, a season in which Carl Yastrzemski was the American League's ONLY .300 hitter. But the lowered pitching mound has prevented pitchers who throw 98 mph fastballs from getting even more leverage, thus hurting offense. And some purists have the temerity to suggest that a little bunny has been added to the baseball. Ridiculous.
The Home Run Derby Rule will add an exciting dimension to baseball games. It will remove the possibility of a game having the potential to last forever. Certainly their will be ties in Home Run Derby, but such ties will be broken much sooner than an extra inning game that is tied.
And as far as the World Series winner being determined by the Home Run Derby, it would provide the most exciting finishes in World Series history. Think of Bill Mazeroski. That would be a distinct possibility in EVERY World Series. It doesn't get any better.
Source
Date
Wed 07/12/06, 8:06 am EST
