One might think I'm reasonably happy about the subway series, with the Mets winning 2-0 in the last game and the Yankees winning the first two 4-1 and 4-3, and I did take some pleasure in the decent pitching and low scores. In most ways, however, the games were tedious in the way contemporary games often are: almost all the runs were scored on home runs and there were too many strikeouts, a total of 37 strikeouts by the Mets and 28 by the Yankees in the three games. Also, the one run that was not scored on a home run was pitcher Masahiro Tanaka scoring on a sacrifice fly and while running from third to home he strained both hamstrings! Shades of Yankee pitcher Chien-Mien Wang, whose promising career went downhill when he injured himself running the bases in 2008. If there is going to be interleague play then it is time to get rid of the ridiculous designated hitter -- a violation of one of the beauties of baseball: that one has to both hit and play the field. Even without the dubiousness of interleague play the designated hitter is a blight on the world series, already diminished enough by the endless playoffs leading up to it.
As for home runs, I have already written (posting of Sept. 22, 2018) about how to give pitchers more of an advantage: expand the strike zone, raise the mound, legalize the spitball. If home runs are made more difficult then perhaps we can see more of what makes baseball exciting and beautiful: the stolen base, the bunt (for a hit as well as a sacrifice), the hit-and-run play; all these elegant plays that make the game exciting and beautiful are practically extinct as everyone swings for the fences.
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