...or at least two. There is nothing more boring than endless pitching changes in the late innings of a game. It's led to the farce of 13-man pitching staffs, to give managers--or, more accurately, control-freak front offices--the most shadowy advantages while making a travesty of the game. Over the last generation, three real baseball players have been sacrificed for three left-handed "specialists" to try to get one lousy hitter out. How does this help the game? Or make it better? Tony LaRussa's game is a goddam bore. As for reducing strategy--crap. Putting more guys on the bench would increase strategy a lot more than the eight-man bullpens would. And maybe we'd return, at least a little, to the game of the 60s and 70s, when real pitchers threw real games. Sometimes--gasp!--nine innings. You know--Gibson, Marichal, Koufax, Bunning, Jenkins, Seaver, Carlton. Those guys. Maybe there are masochists who'd prefer the endless parade of the one-batter lefty relievers to watching real pitchers throwing real baseball. I say, restrict the staffs to ten men. Maybe, too, this will keep kids from blowing out their arms when they're 13--*teenagers* are getting the fucking Tommy John surgery these days--and over-emphasizing things like weight-lifting. These guys are baseball players, not Olympic weight lifters, or even football players. Baseball requires a balance of skills, and size and strength, per se, are only one aspect of the game. It's gotten muscle-bound, literally and figuratively. OK--old fart's rambling polemic in favor of the Good Old Days is over...
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