When baseball historian Bill Humber first heard about the golden at-bat idea that Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred floated on a recent podcast, he was a little taken aback.
"I kind of laughed, actually," Humber said Wednesday. "I thought it was one of the stupidest ideas I'd ever heard."
MLB has seen its share of change of late, but the thought of a team using one at-bat each game to send any hitter it wants to the plate — even if it's not their turn in the batting order — was quite a curveball.
Resistance to Change
"This can’t be real," former Blue Jays pitcher and seven-time Cy Young Award winner Roger Clemens posted on social media.
Wild-card playoff tinkering, pitch clocks, shift rules, and automatic runners are some of the more significant changes to the game in recent years. All had varying levels of detractors and the golden at-bat discussion is no different. Critics are eyeing it like a meatball thrown across the middle of the plate.
Preserving Baseball's Magic
"It doesn't really fit within the logic of the game in my mind," said Humber, a Canadian Baseball Hall of Famer. "I look upon it quite askance to be honest with you. I don't see the point of it in a way."
Humber cited a number of grand baseball moments that might not have happened if a golden at-bat rule were in effect.
"One can imagine when Bobby Thomson hit his famous home run against the (Brooklyn) Dodgers in 1951, Willie Mays was on deck," he said of the 'Shot Heard 'Round the World' that gave the New York Giants the National League pennant.
What about the two famous World Series-winning walkoffs? Would the skippers have used a golden at-bat to get their best pure hitter to the plate?
Bill Mazeroski went deep to give Pittsburgh the Fall Classic in 1960, and Joe Carter's walkoff blast in 1993 gave the Blue Jays their second straight World Series title.
League Reaction
Manfred first mentioned the golden at-bat idea publicly in an interview with John Ourand on Puck's "The Varsity" podcast. The commissioner said the subject came up at a recent owners' meeting.
Retired sportswriter Dave Perkins, who covered the Blue Jays for years over his long career at the Toronto Star, said use of a golden at-bat would be "a travesty."
The subject of potential rule changes like the golden at-bat came up when Blue Jays general manager Ross Atkins met with the Toronto chapter of the Baseball Writers' Association of America earlier this week.
Traditionalists' View
Scott Crawford, operations director of the Canadian Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, said he prefers a traditional setup where any player can be a hero at any time.
This report by The Canadian Press was first published Dec. 4, 2024.
baseball, MLB, golden at-bat, rule change
