The Major League Baseball All-Star Break has always felt like the season’s halftime. It’s the perfect time to look back at the first half and ask a simple question:
Is baseball better today than it was just a few years ago?
Like most baseball questions, the answer isn’t as simple as it first appears.
I’ll admit my bias right up front. I’m a baseball traditionalist.
I still don’t like the designated hitter. I think the Wild Card has diminished the importance of the regular season. Interleague play has taken some of the mystique out of both the All-Star Game and the World Series.
But being a traditionalist doesn’t mean I’m opposed to change.
A few years ago, baseball desperately needed it.
Games had become too long. Too many at-bats ended with either a strikeout or a walk. Endless pitching changes slowed the pace to a crawl. The game wasn’t losing its soul, but it was certainly losing its audience.
To baseball’s credit, the sport responded.
The pitch clock has made games more watchable. Bigger bases and new rules have made the stolen base relevant again. The three-batter minimum has reduced the endless parade of relief pitchers. Even the ABS Challenge System has produced the most consistent strike zone I can remember.
Those are meaningful improvements.
Yet every time I watch a game, I find myself thinking about a line I’ve quoted before in this blog from Charles Frazier’s Cold Mountain:
“For everything added, something is lost. Oftentimes what is lost is preferable to what is gained.”
That sentence has always resonated with me because every improvement comes with a cost.
I’ve loved this game for as long as I can remember.
As a little boy, major leaguers were heroes. As a teenager, I convinced myself that maybe—just maybe—I might someday become one of them. As an adult, I eventually realized every player on the field was younger than me. Today, I simply sit back and marvel at athletes capable of doing things that border on the unbelievable.
I still love baseball.
I’m just not sure I love every change to today’s game.
The pace is unquestionably better.
But when it’s the eighth inning of a one-run game, I don’t want the tension dictated by a countdown clock. I want the batter stepping out just long enough to make the pitcher think. I want the veteran pitcher shaking off signs because he already knows what he wants to throw—not because an iPad in the dugout told him so.
I miss that silent chess match.
Those moments weren’t wasted time. They were drama.
I also love seeing stolen bases return.
For years, analytics nearly erased one of the game’s most exciting plays. But in bringing the stolen base back, we’ve also lost another part of baseball I genuinely enjoyed.
I miss watching pitchers work tirelessly to keep runners close. I miss the endless dance of pickoff moves, changing looks, and the occasional perfectly timed pitchout that caught everyone—including the runner—by surprise.
Those battles began long before the pitcher ever released the baseball.
The same is true in the dugout.
I supported the three-batter minimum because managers had begun treating every left-handed hitter as though he belonged to a protected species.
Still, I miss watching managers wrestle with difficult decisions.
Do you burn your best pinch hitter now? Do you save him for the ninth? Do you use one pinch hitter simply to force a pitching change before countering with another?
Baseball has always been a thinking person’s game, and some of its most fascinating strategic moments have quietly disappeared.
Then there’s the ABS Challenge System.
The benefits are undeniable.
One missed ball or strike can completely change an at-bat. The difference between a 3-1 count and a 2-2 count can alter the outcome of an entire game.
The challenge system has also revealed something else.
Major League umpires are actually pretty darn good.
Even before ABS, they correctly called nearly 93 percent of pitches. Catchers win only about 60 percent of their challenges. Hitters are successful even less often.
Maybe the umpires deserved more credit than many of us gave them.
So why am I still conflicted?
Because during my years as a coach, there was one lesson I hoped every athlete would learn.
Overcome adversity.
A bad call, a bad bounce, an error, a strikeout, that’s sports. That’s life.
When a player makes an error, he doesn’t get a do-over. He and his teammates simply accept the new reality and compete on the next pitch.
Perhaps that’s why I struggle with replay—not because I don’t want the call to be right, but because perfection has never been the point of competition.
Besides, if perfect fairness is truly our goal, why stop at a limited number of challenges?
Why not review every close play?
The answer, of course, is both practical and philosophical.
Practically, the game would grind to a halt.
Philosophically, nothing involving human beings will ever be perfect.
Nor should it be.
The beauty of sports has always been that human greatness and human imperfection exist side by side. That’s true in baseball, and it’s true in life.
Baseball today is healthier than it was just a few years ago.
The games are quicker. The action is better. The fans are more engaged.
Those are victories worth celebrating.
But progress always comes with a price.
Sometimes it’s worth paying, but sometimes what we lose matters just as much as what we gain.
The game is hard to play. The game is hard to umpire.
Errors by players and missed calls by umpires don’t diminish baseball. They remind us just how difficult the game really is.
As Tom Hanks reminded Geena Davis in A League of Their Own:
“It’s supposed to be hard. If it wasn’t hard, everyone would do it. The hard is what makes it great.”
Maybe that’s why we keep coming back.
Not simply because we love baseball, but because somewhere between the triumphs and the mistakes, the brilliance and the imperfections, we see a little of ourselves.
That’s the perspective this week.
I’d love to hear what other baseball fans think. Has baseball found the right balance, or has it given up too much in its pursuit of progress?
Until next week…
Coach T
