Taking the National Pastime Back to the Past

Thinking about how the game of baseball has evolved over time is somewhat upsetting to me for a number of reasons. It's an odd attitude to have, given that I'm not even old enough to remember the "good old days" at Ebbets or have disgruntled parents to tell me stories about how "the price of a ticket back when I was young would probably get you about ten peanuts nowadays." Maybe I have some sort of overly romanticized vision of the way things were. Or maybe I just can't let go of the past, which, as a Braves fan, isn't all that surprising (I was still absentmindedly writing the date as "XX-XX-95" on school papers as late as 1998).

Nonetheless, I have beef with a few things, the majority of which are related to the decline of "small ball" and this not-so-recent obsession with things like power hitters, home run records, and radar guns.

I hate the designated hitter rule.

I hate the Yankees and their ability to simply buy their way to the hearts of millions of fans.

I wish the pitching mound hadn't be lowered from 15 to 10 inches because it gives the advantage to the hitter. (And yes, I am citing a 40-year-old regulation).

I wish managers would let starters pitch deeper into games. When did it become such standard practice to bring in a reliever to pitch to one batter? One could make the argument that this elevates the strategy involved in the game, but pitchers will never learn to pitch themselves out of a jam. Weak.

I'm not even going to touch the performance-enhancing drug issue; that's almost too easy to use as fuel to the fire.

Not to say that home run hitters and and power pitchers weren't also in the spotlight back when Hank Aaron and Nolan Ryan were playing. But I feel that some purity and wholesomeness to the original game has been lost in a "brawn over brains" kind of way. 

Fine. I'll accept the fact that a McDonald's and various auto repair shops now stand where Ebbets Field used to be and that tickets are no longer a dollar. But I will still get more excited about a suicide squeeze than a grand slam. And I will gladly take a 1-0 pitcher's duel over a slugfest any day.