Major League Baseball announced on Monday a rule change that effectively eliminates all collisions at the plate between catchers and base runners, drawing mixed reactions. This comes just months after the MLB announced it was going to make instant replays a part of the game, giving each manager a chance to replay per game, much like the challenge rule in the NFL.
This is not a theme that resides solely in the MLB, however. The NFL has made headlines the past couple of years with all of their rule changes in preventing hits to the heads of defenseless receivers and other rules that have limited contact. The NBA, not many years ago, instituted the continuation rule – allowing players the opportunity to finish the play when fouled.
With all of these rule changes, however, I believe that it is important to step back and determine whether these rules are doing more good, or more harm.
There have been several catchers, since the rumor broke that the MLB was going to implement the anti-collision rule, who have come out and said that they have no problem with collisions and understand they are a part of the game. Several other players, who pose as the runners in this scenario, have also given their opinions, stating that the game is fine the way it is. So why change it?
At the root of so many of these rules is player safety, in the MLB and NFL alike. In 2011, San Francisco Giants catcher Buster Posey’s leg broke on a collision at home plate. Because of the only purposeful contact play in baseball, the Giants lost their poster child for the rest of the season. Likewise, the NFL has implemented a number of rules in recent years that dictate where hits can be made on players, defenseless or otherwise, due to frightening themes of declined health in retired players decades down the road.
Player safety and prolonged health is one thing; nobody wants to see retired players hindered in their later life because of things that happened in their playing days. However, while player safety rules can be taken with a grain of salt, how are we defending these other rules?
Why is the MLB expanding instant replay? Baseball has been played without replay for many, many years. Why are we adding it now? What is this going to do to the quality of the umpires? How will this begin to factor in at the end of games when players start making excuses because, “Oh, if we would have had another replay we would have won this game”?
One of the downsides of baseball, in a large number of opinions, is the slow pace of the game – although I could argue otherwise. Why are we going to slow it even further? Is the MLB going to turn into the NBA, where they have media timeouts every couple minutes and it seems like they play for 30 seconds between commercials?
My purpose in all of this is simply to question the reason for this epidemic of rule change in professional sports. Are we really doing more good than harm? Is the game better off because of these new rules?
I was once told, in a baseball context although it applies to all sports, that, “The game was here long before you, and will remain long after you leave … so respect it.”
Which brings me to my primary question: is this generation going to leave the game having made it better than when we entered it?
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