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You're Kidding, Right? I Mean, You Have To Be Kidding
Ever heard of that thing back in Holland in 1637, how the entire country just went insane, how everyone became obsessed with tulips, how people were buying them at astronomical prices, and how others were ditching their life's work to concentrate on tulips? And how the whole thing crashed, and how Holland was pretty much ruined? And how it's difficult to believe people ever could have behaved that way?
That's what's going on now. Only with Barry Bonds, not tulips.
The very idea -- put forth recently by people such as the Boston Globe's Bob Ryan, who I always knew was amusing but insane; and ESPN.com's Jayson Stark, who I find informative and had considered sensible -- that the rules of baseball should be changed because Barry Bonds is getting too many intentional walks is the most preposterous suggestion in my lifetime to be taken seriously by more than a negligible percentage of sports fans.
I assumed that anyone who said they thought the intentional walk rules should be changed just for Barry Bonds would have to be kidding.
I guess they're not.
The idea is that Bonds is, no matter how he got to that point, the greatest hitter in baseball today, if not the greatest hitter of all time. Granted. Therefore, fans come to the ballpark hoping to see a piece of history whenever the Giants are in town. Granted. And the fans are disappointed when Barry gets intentionally walked all the time. Granted.
We could debate for a while whether it's a great strategic move to walk Bonds intentionally as often as teams do. I'd say it's not, and I'd win. But that's not what we're here to talk about. We're here to talk about this suggestion -- roundly pooh-poohed by most right-thinking baseball executives, if Jayson Stark's latest article on the topic is to be believed -- that the rules should be changed for Barry Bonds.
The main idea is either to limit the number of "intentional" walks a player can receive in one game, or penalize teams that "intentionally" walk a player multiple times in one game. Stark lists five possible "solutions," each more silly than the last: 1) Ban the intentional walk altogether. 2) Limit intentional walks to one per player per game. 3) On an intentional walk, every runner gets to move up a base. 4) You take first base on your first intentional walk, second base on your second, etc. 5) The hitter can decline the intentional walk, as if it were a holding penalty in football.
The idea is to change the rules so pitchers are compelled to pitch to Barry Bonds.
The obvious problem with this idea, the problem that should walk up to this idea's crib and smother it with a pillow before it has a chance to wreak its havoc on the baseball world, is that it necessarily would be the sole discretion of the home plate umpire to decide whether any given walk was "intentional" or not.
Should intentional walks be banned, limited or rationed like so many World War II-era nylon hose, umpires would be called upon to determine whether a pitcher might be A) trying to paint the corners and simply failing to do so, or B) trying to avoid throwing Bonds a pitch he would almost certainly yank 500 feet (gasp! "boo" "I want my money back" "how dare you" "that's not how baseball is meant to be played, you pussy!").
But its reliance on clairvoyant officiating is not the proposed rule's only flaw. No, it fails to take into account -- or, more accurately, ignores -- the fact that these rules would apply to everybody, not just Barry Bonds.
World Series, Game 7. Fifteen years from now. The Yankees (obviously) and, say, the Reds. The Reds have a pitcher who's having an almost statistically impossible year. 28-3, 1.76, 324 strikeouts. This guy starts Game 7. One thing: he can't hit. At all. Two hits all year, and one of them was a sacrifice bunt where the third basemen fell down. Also, the Reds' number eight hitter has been hot lately. Two homers so far in the series, hitting almost .400. He's in the zone.
So, in top of the first inning (this is in Cincinnati, since the National League won the 2019 All-Star Game), the Yankees miraculously take a 5-0 lead off of this pitcher. Some cheap hits, some errors. The pitcher has his stuff, but everything breaks wrong.
Then, the Reds come back and get three runs. Then, with runners on second and third with two out, Zone Boy steps in, with Automatic Out Pitcher on deck. So, the Yankees intentionally walk him, obviously, to get to Automatic Out Pitcher, who fans on three pitches.
Fast forward to the bottom of the 13th. Tie game, two out, runners on second and third again. Zone Boy comes up again. On deck: the Reds' closer, who has three big league at bats. The Reds have used every other player, so they can't pinch hit for him.
Now, the Yankees already walked Zone Boy intentionally back in the first inning, and the only move that makes a lick of sense is to walk him intentionally again, but, they can't, because back when most of the players were in grade school, Barry Bonds had three really dominant years, and the entire baseball world went batshit, tulip-style. Now, they've got to pretend that they're giving him pitches to hit, praying that their pitcher doesn't miss by enough to where the umpire decides it's really an intentional walk and awards the World Series to the Reds.
I mean, sure, the Yankees lose the World Series in this scenario, and that's great, but, it really isn't even close to fair.
And yes, I know, rules have been changed before with the expressed purpose of changing the way the game is competed. Lanes were widened and the three-second rule was imposed so that big men couldn't camp out in the lane. Pitching mounds were lowered after Carl Yastrzemski won the American League batting title by hitting .301.
[incidentally, shouldn't "Yastrzemski" be in my spell checker? Come on, Microsoft Word, you're better than that!]
The difference is, those rules were put in place to hinder competitors who had an advantage. Walking Barry Bonds intentionally isn't really an "advantage," in that more often than not, when pitched to, he either walks anyway, singles, or makes an out, all of which are equal to or preferable to an intentional pass. These rule changes are proposed because fans don't like to see Barry Bonds walked intentionally, because it's yucky, and where's my lollipop, and it's my birthday so I can do whatever I want, and just five more minutes Mom please!
If you want to talk about rule changes relating to Barry Bonds, one more in accordance with baseball history would be banning giant elbow pads the size of beach balls. Bonds is able to lean out over the plate to a laughable degree, and any pitcher who dares to throw one two inches off the inside of the plate (i.e., at him) is subject to reprimand and ejection. This notion that pitching inside is not allowed, and that giant elbow pads the size of beach balls are, has done as much if not more than steroids to undermine the basic competitive nature of baseball. When held up next to steroids and giants elbow pads the size of beach balls, intentional walks don't even register on the "Ways Baseball Is Worse Because of Barry Bonds" scale.
So stop this "banning the intentional walk" nonsense. I don't want to here anymore about it.
[fun fact: in researching this article -- shut up; I do too research my articles -- I realized that Florin and Guilder, the two kingdoms referenced in "The Princess Bride," are actually units of Dutch currency. Maybe I should have known that anyway, but, still]
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