I heard about this story about how the Braves ended a spring training game in a tie, because a player got the game-ending third strike on account of not being in the batter’s box in time, because 2023 marks the start of the pitch clock era, where every single pitch now has a timer attached to it in an effort to speed up the pace of games because society’s ever-growing ADD has declared that baseball games are too long and nobody likes them anymore as a result.
No sport gets fucked with structurally as much as baseball does. Aside from some rule changes to discourage defense because offense is sexy, basketball is by and large the same game as it now as it was back in the 1950’s. Football’s primarily changed in order to try and reduce concussions and protect quarterbacks, but pretty much everything else goes as it did in back in 1920.
But baseball? Any strategy that seems too effective is neutered or outright banned (the shift), pitching mounds are raised, lowered, the physical baseballs themselves are altered, bats are regulated and banned, and there are rule changes practically every year. One of the lasting anecdotes about baseball was that it was the game with no clock, and as a result, every single pitcher-batter matchup was potentially important, and that there was no strategic milking of the clock, and that every out had to be recorded in order for a team to be declared a victor.
Now, there is an actual clock, which effectively puts the romanticism of baseball having no clock and that every out must be earned to rest, because now baseball has embarked on a path where games really can have a finite time limit now. With rules in place that prevent managers from spamming pitching changes in order to play matchups, and rules in place that prohibit excessive checking base runners by pitchers, MLB has basically closed the walls around old school baseball strategy and effectively put a hard time limit on every game, flexible solely by the need for extra innings or managers milking pitching changes to the most of their limited new abilities.
The Pedro Astacios who took practically an entire minute in between every pitch, and the Bruce Chens who once trolled an entire stadium by checking a runner at first like 14 times will all be phased out and rendered extinct, regardless of how capable they are throwing a baseball, and future Moneyball will probably be cultivating pitching staffs with wildly different pitch preparation speeds, with the intention of throwing off batter timing throughout games.
With all these changes to the game, I just think about the times in the past where I think about having loved baseball the most and lately, the name that pops up the most as someone I really miss, is Dan Uggla.
He was kind of like the anti-stat geek player that the rise of the stat geeks baseball culture absolutely abhorred, but teams themselves still coveted because of his sheer ability to hit home runs when he actually made contact with the ball. His defense was below-average, he wasn’t a threat to steal bases, and being a second baseman it’s not like he had much of an arm. But again, the guy hit home runs, and that’s a talent that every team wants, whether they wanted him as a starter, or a designated pinch-hitter, or an actual designated hitter.
There was once a season where he hit .179 on the year which is abysmal, but he still clobbered 22 home runs, which is still noteworthy. My friend and I made the joke that all he hit were home runs, and with just 80 total hits on the year, he really did hit home runs over 25% of the time.
I take it back about not having much of an arm though, the guy had more physical arms than just about anyone else in the history of Major League Baseball, because pound-for-pound, Dan Uggla had to have been the most jacked player in history. The guy was 5’11 which isn’t that tall as far as professional athletes go, but the guy had massive, massive arms, with most people making the comparison that his arms looked like Popeye.
Additionally, Dan Uggla also wore the tightest, most form-fitting uniforms as he could, throughout his whole career. I’m not sure if it were deliberate, or if across the board there were some sizing issues for a man of his stature combined with his musculature, but my friends and I declared that his uniform size was “smedium” and made the comparison for any time anyone was seen wearing a tight-fitting shirt in order to attempt to make their musculature look impressive deliberately.
All in all, Dan Uggla was kind of the perfect poster boy for ironic baseball player fandom. He was hated by nerds, but still loved by teams, and basically always had a job as long as he kept hitting home runs, all while wearing his ridiculous smedium uniforms and looking like he had professional wrestling as a post-career option. But more importantly, he was kind of like this totem of simpler times, where there weren’t so many oppressive rules, fans bitching about game duration weren’t heard, and players had to deal with the shift. No matter his numbers, relievers and closers in his time, still had to face Dan Uggla with the game on the line and although the numbers may have favored them most of the time any mistake they let loose was probably going to end up in the seats.
Man, I miss Dan Uggla. Even more now, with the game itself undergoing so many dramatic changes. It’s going to be weird when I eventually actually watch a baseball game again, and seeing shit like pitching clocks on the HUD, and I imagine they’ll feel noticeably faster in speed, which in some cases might feel pretty convenient, but at the same time, very much not like the baseball that was what I grew to love and enjoy.
