MLB is foolishly eliminating one of baseball’s most compelling dynamics

“Hello, I’m Roger ‘Good Investments’ Goodell here to tell you how to gamble your house from the comfort of your own home.”

Look what they did to our games, Ma.

October 15, 1986, the day into early night when the nation still interested in baseball witnessed one of the most riveting and intense games of baseball ever produced naturally.

I don’t know where Rob Manfred was that day, but he wasn’t with me. Or maybe he was. I was so madly tied to the TV that I wouldn’t have noticed.

Game 6, the Mets-Astros NLCS clincher, 16 innings of the most riveting baseball since deciding to sell Peanuts.

The Mets had to win it, with ex-Met and NL Cy Young winner Mike Scott fielding Game 7. Already 2-0 in the series, Scott allowed just one run in 18 innings, two full games. That was before Analytics drew starters like that after six innings.

But New York had to come back 3-0 after the first inning to level by three points in the ninth inning.

And the unbelievable never stopped. Each team scored a run in the 14. The Mets appeared to have won it with three at the top of the 16th, but the Astros scored twice and had the runner in second when Jesse Orosco finished it off, defeating Kevin Bass. Final score 7-6. Exhale.

That night, throughout this week, and up until yesterday at least, New Yorkers shared stories about where they were during that game.

Some left work with transistor radios, others complained that transistors were useless on the subway, others spent the rest of the game in pubs close to work. Not even Yankees fans could turn away.

No replay challenges, no DH, no analytics; 50,000 in Houston, paying affordable fares, side by side through joy, agony and fear. Baseball in its glorious, natural and unforgettable beauty.

But such games, according to Inspector Manfred, are no longer tolerated.

MLB — overwhelmed by its self-inflicted boredom, abandonment of the basics, and devotion to computerized scientific applications over the unscientific — has decided that all extra-inning games must begin with an artificial addition, a gimmick in the form of a designated runner-second.

Don’t fix what kills baseball, fix what doesn’t!

And this season, Manfred — who, like Goodell, is so consistently and conspicuously portraying himself as what he isn’t (the fans’ leading advocate) — is good with it, maybe even proud of it.

And now, in exchange for tens of millions of Apple TV streaming dough, MLB will exploit the Mets’ second game of the season — next Friday night’s game at the Nationals, Max Scherzer was expecting his first start for the Mets — as payment. additional subscription bait. The game will not be broadcast on SNY or Channel 11, only on first-few-are-free internet devices.

And more than 20 Yankees games will be removed from Channel 11 free viewing and lost to the Amazon streaming deal with additional fees.

More decisions that should have been too absurd, too ugly, too greedy and too unnatural to even consider. It’s an abomination to the game’s well-being and welfare. But instead of “No way!” MLB replied, “How much?”

“Mr. Gorbachev, tear down this wage wall!”

The NFL adds another token to their tokenism

The NFL’s latest diversity rules once again lack both foresight and true racial and gender practicality and honesty.

Now teams are required to interview both women and minority male assistant offense coaches, adding to the predictable stupidity of the Rooney Rule, which led only to suspicion or reality of interviews conducted as a matter of rank tokenism.

How did you get your NFL job? “I am black” or “I am a woman” should be calculated as an exercise in the service of legitimate equality? No more than separate drinking fountains. If the NFL knows that one of their teams practices racial or gender discrimination, act accordingly! Don’t assume they all do!

This logically creates the suspicion or reality that minimizes the legitimate qualifications of all women and minority hires. It offends those it claims to benefit!

How do you defeat tokenism? More tokenism!

Meanwhile, Roger Goodell’s NFL and NFLPA continue to ignore what has become a serious criminal problem among players. More of the usual this week. Panthers wide receiver Shi Smith was arrested on drugs and a handgun after being pulled over for speeding. It’s an NFL epidemic, but Goodell has never even hinted at it.

More: The NFL’s new overtime rules establish a standard to determine teams that make the playoffs and different rules — each team guarantees possession — to determine who wins playoff games.

The regular season’s unfair OT standard is upheld for the reason Goodell left out in his “doing it for the fans” statement: TV money, especially when it comes to big TV market teams.

The NFL and its networks don’t want the 1:00 p.m. OT regular season games to further clash with the start of the 4:15 games, which are largely scheduled for 4:15 p.m. because they include better teams.

And if the Jets and Giants, their records notwithstanding, play at 4:15, as you’ve known for years after watching more than three hours of an early game that went into the OT, that game then becomes eligible for local commercials abandoned a scene-setter from wherever the Jets and Giants are going to play.

But why tell the truth when you can claim it’s “all about our fans”?

Spanarkel adds sparks to madness

The NCAA’s runaway TV MVP was analyst Jim Spanarkel. He added immediately applicable meaning to every game he worked on – from warning defenses to overplay players’ dominant dribbling hands to identifying Purdue as too single-minded trying to exploit his height advantage , which consisted of two teams front and back, from undersized outsiders St. Peter.

He is excellent for all and only the right reasons. No yelling, no cool silly expressions, all substance. And now – based on emails from here, there and everywhere – the nation is realizing just how good he is.

It remains unfathomable that unless it was a misguided variety – he was replaced by Sarah Kustok and Richard Jefferson – Spanarkel was dropped by YES as Ian Eagle’s longtime partner on Nets TV shows. What a mistake.

Why do we assume that any thought, even misapplied, will ever be applied?

At the start of Saturday’s Kansas-Miami tournament game, the score was 9-9 on the fly when CBS decided it was a good time to distract us by releasing a breaking graphic that KU had “three assists on his.” has four FGs”.

Apparently, the CBS outside broadcast van had been ambushed by saboteurs. Then again, after jumping onto the stage like it was Ford’s theater – “Sic semper tyrannis!” – to smack Chris Rock, how much thought went into Will Smith, who received a standing ovation?

Too much important tournament information is withheld from television. For example, Charlie Moore, Miami’s “six-year” guard from Chicago, originally signed for Memphis but played for Cal instead. Then Kansas. Then DePaul. Then Miami.

Reader Tommy Ameen considers Moore to be the “best trained student athlete” in the country.