Via b psycho I read this gem of a post by Tom DiLorenzo:
"re: Abolish the Home Run
Posted by Thomas DiLorenzo at October 19, 2007 02:36 PM
And abolish dunking in basketball as well. Make it a 3 point penalty for dunking, and change it back to a game of skill, coordination and athelticism instead of a competetiton (sic) among giants, striding down the court like Jolly Green Giants hellbent on destroying the backboard with their next "dunk."
Perhaps a new league would be required. "
Forget about it, Tom. There’s never going to be a league tailored to your level of ability in either basketball or baseball. Oh wait, I forgot about tee league, and there is donkey basketball. Why are there scare quotes around "dunk"?
Tom was adding his two cents to this much more elegant argument about salvaging baseball. The author cited by Lew Rockwell suggests that the out of the parker be an out. We played that way when I was a kid but only because we usually had only one ball, usually made mostly of duct tape, and hitting it over the fence meant that it might be lost. In most games, there wasn’t even a fence, just acres of pasture, so all our home runs were “inside the park” in a manner of speaking.
I don’t know that the home run has killed baseball. Baseball was doing fine for decades after Ruth began swatting them out of the park in the dozens. Cricket has its sixes (out of bounds on the fly) and fours (out of bounds on a roll), and nobody reckons that these are bad for cricket. They’re harder to hit, I suppose, but nobody reckons that a strong batsman capable of whacking the ball out of the pitch is a bad thing. It’s exciting.
Home runs are exciting, too. There is an enormous fan base of baseball dilettantes who have no appreciation for the subtleties of the game. They want home runs and strike outs to break up what seems to them the monotony of other aspects of the game. The aficionado views the monotonous as exciting because of his superior competence and enjoyment of the nuances, but he owes the success of the leagues to the dilettantes and should humor them if he knows what is good for him and his sport. Some dilettantes will grow into aficionados. Most will not. It’s the same in the other sports. They are in a sense “dumbed down” for the masses, but the elite fans need them to subsidize the games. The elite fans ought to patronize amateur leagues if they are looking for more old-fashioned play.
That said, I have some suggestions for improving baseball as well. Let the players carry their bats with them as they run the bases and use them to their advantage. When a batsman hits a homer, he gets to keep batting until he ends up on base again or is put out. A batsman should have the option on putting a ball into play whether to run or not. The pitch won’t count as a strike, and as long as the batsman stays in the box, he cannot be put out. Or if he returns to the box before the catcher has the ball, he is not out. Fielders should be able to put players out by hitting them with the ball while they are off base. The runners may use their bats to defend against this. Pitchers should be able to bounce the ball over the plate if they are capable of this feat.
These changes would make the game both more exciting and more interesting. Everybody wins.
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2 comments:
I agree with the notion of getting rid of the slam dunk, if only because it is a symptom of the fact that the "tallest player arms race" has mostly replaced skill in pro basketball. But why change the rules? Just raise all the hoops to a new standard height of 10 feet -- then let 'em dunk, if they can.
Baseball, too, could use some changes -- but again, these are mostly not rule changes (at least, not in the rules that players have to obey). I propose the following reforms to rid baseball of some of its unfair inconsistencies.
1. Have a camera and computer, rather than a man behind the plate, call the balls and strikes. (One of my local TV stations has had and used this tech for 10+ years.)
2. Add a replay rule -- but a much simpler version than in the NFL. At most games today, each team has its own (partisan) TV crew in a booth announcing the game for its home audience, and most of them are good at catching refs' errors and showing them to the viewers -- at least when the error favors their own team. So I say, give those TV crews official authority to review calls. Put an official in each of the two booths (preferably by deputizing someone already there) and let him confer with his opposite and the guy on the field (who would break ties) via radio headsets. I see no reason why this would not work for all sports.
3. Prevent any more fan interference with plays by putting glass walls between all field level seats and the field.
4. Narrow the standards for ball parks. Try to make them identical (at least in terms of where and how far you have to hit the ball to get a home run).
5. Since using things like steroids is human nature, and enforcing the ban only sometimes is more unfair than never, legalize 'em all. Sports are risky anyhow -- and the whole point of being an adult is getting to make your own risk/reward choices for yourself.
They're already 10 feet, John.
As for height replacing skill, two words: Shawn Bradley. 7 foot 6, couldn't play a lick, went bye-bye quick. He's most known now for having been viciously dunked on by an assortment of players a foot shorter than him.
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