Dan Bernstein (44:05)
And it's also something where I think I can actually agree on some things. And this might surprise you, but the quest to bring more action to baseball is a noble one. I do get the idea that the concept of three true outcomes of velocity, all the strikeouts and the home runs and the walks, making baseball less interesting because there are fewer balls in play. I think that's a totally reasonable argument. That's an aesthetic argument. That's not about necessarily good or bad or good for you or good for me. It's just what you like and what you think people like what you like. As a baseball fan, if you liked the 70s game better, if you liked, you know, pre steroids, if you liked slappier baseball, the idea that strikeouts were bad and you were supposed to try to not strike out Smart people have written about this. The point of the ball and strike system is to make you swing the bat. That's the point. The point is the guy threw three right over the plate and you didn't swing. So go sit down. Or to the pitcher, you threw three and the guy didn't have a chance to swing, so he gets to go to the base. And now those rules have sort of inverted and been exploited. So the idea is that, hey, swing the bat, put it in play, let somebody make a play. I get all that. And that's why they made the bases bigger. That's why they, they, they tried to have fewer shifts and moved the shifts, and it didn't really work in all these ways. And so I started to put it together that even if we agree that maybe there's ways to make baseball, as the players get bigger, stronger, faster, better, that there, there might be ways outside of moving the mound back, which would be the best one. But if that's not necessarily a bad goal to have, eventually to find a way to evolve the sport to have more action in it, I think everybody would agree with that. The problem is today's game is today's game. The way you win at baseball is by driving the ball in the air and by throwing the ball as hard as you can all the time to lessen the possibility that a ball is in play. That's just the way the game is played. And we know that that's how teams are built. That's what, that's what has happened. As long as the bases are 90ft apart or slightly less now with the larger bases, that as long as there is a fence and as long as outs are the capital of the game and the timer of the game being outs. Because I loved it when Smoltz said something like, well, it's a seventh inning, so if they're going to come back, it has to start now. And my thought was, no, it doesn't. It does. It literally doesn't. That it can start with two outs in the bottom of the ninth. It doesn't matter. As long as you get the runs, it doesn't matter when it starts. It's as long as you're not out, you're in the game. It doesn't have to start now. But I, but I, but he, he there. This is the realization that I had and I tried to put it together. Why does Smoltz hate home runs and not even sort of recognize home runs? He likes to talk about all kinds of run creation, but he won't acknowledge what home runs do even as he's watching them. He hates velocity, where he was describing 101 mile an hour pitch boy, he's painting out there. That's not painting. That's not painting. That's a flamethrower. That's blowing people away because they can't hit it because the ball's too fast. He won't even say what's obvious to everybody. He won't say he just blowing people away. You can't catch up with that velocity because it's nearly impossible, which it's obvious. Velocity has changed the game. Filthy stuff has changed the game because of velocity in large part. But he won't acknowledge it. And he also will go out of his way to talk about balls in play and ground balls and things. And I realized something. He likes soft hits more than hard hits. He's calling what he wants. He's trying to fit the game in front of him into an idealized version of the game that he wants. Now, if he were on a podcast and he were just saying, you know, the game today really bugs me, he said, ideally, I would love to go back to the way the game looked in 1982. Guys are running around the bases and you're throwing over here and you're throwing over there, and occasionally you hit a home run, you run into one, and that's great, but you're not trying to hit a home run every time and all that. But to do it within the context of a broadcast, when your job is to call the game in front of you and understand how this is at the moment. And these are. These take years and years and years of rules changes and years, and maybe 20 years from now, he'll get what he wants. Maybe they'll figure out a way to deaden the ball. Maybe they'll figure out a way to. To change the rules, to incentivize something other than a strikeout. I don't know. I'm open to all. I'm open to having these discussions, but for the moment, you've got to do the job in front of you. And it's understand what teams are doing to try to win. What is this? And this team is trying to hit home runs. They're trying to hit the ball in the air on the barrel of the bat as hard as you can. And it's all measured via statcast. And we can quibble about issuing stats and being bothered by what the understanding of stats has done to exploit certain aspects of the game and all these philosophical things, but don't Let that keep you from doing a job. And that's what bothers me, is it's not the job to call the game you would like. You don't hear golf commentators constantly during a broadcast. It's like all these guys are hitting at 350 yards, and they just got to use a gap wedge into this green. This is not this course. It's designed. This isn't how this course is designed. This isn't the way you're supposed to play this golf course. Here's dechamba bombing away on everything. It's ruining everything. They believe that. A lot of people believe that. But they don't clutter up the current broadcast by being annoyed and harping on it and making that a lead blanket over enjoying it. That's the problem I have, is not separating your vision. There's a time and a place. You want to go to a symposium. You want to do a TED Talk. You want to sit in Rob Manfred's office and eat peanuts with your feet on his desk and hash out this stuff. Great, maybe that'll. Maybe some of that will mean there will be a better game. But for the moment, the game you're actually calling what this is right now is not what you want it to be. But you got to let that go for now and get excited about that, because there's so much to get excited about. There's so many great players. There's so much incredible talent. It might not be ideal for you, it might not be ideal for the average fan that maybe the game would and will be better if it's not all three true outcomes and that these guys aren't all throwing 104 all the time. But you can't be mad at it, and you can't fault them, and you can't piss all over your own product for it not being what you wanted because it's what you grew up with. That, I think, was my realization about sort of my fundamental disconnect with just, it's here, and you're supposed to lend some color to what's going on, context and reasons and history and to not want to use stats ever, ever, ever, ever. To not want to tell me a likelihood. To not want to say, this is a big deal because there was only this chance, and everything is, I see this, or it seems like they haven't gotten a leadoff hit or not. Just tell me. You know, either they have or they haven't. You got a guy in your truck, will tell you. Don't give me. Seems like give me what's real. But to me it's sort of a tragedy. It really is a sad tragedy. The inability to get past your distaste for the current game in a way that won't let you see what's in front of you for what still makes it good.
