A playoffs salute to baseball and its bold change

These are difficult times for baseball traditionalists, a group in which I have a fair amount of seniority. The first clear memory of being an MLB devotee dates to October 1954, when I was about to turn 9 years of age and lost 50 cents to my Uncle Harry betting on the World Series.

I was certain of having fooled him, with me taking Cleveland, 111-43 in the American League, against the New York Giants, 97-57 in the National League.

Willie Mays made The Catch of all catches off Vic Wertz and the Giants swept the Indians in four games. It was an early lesson in the unpredictable nature of this Grand Old Game.

Way back then, the idea that baseball would one day have 12 teams competing for glory in October — not just the winners of the two leagues — would have been more puzzling than multiplication tables.

As Game 2 unfolds in front of me at Target Field, I'm thinking about the various crises that have come and gone in this game, and thinking particularly about one night not many years ago. A World Series game was dragging on and on on television, and I was driven by the endless pitching changes to do something that would have caused my Uncle Harry to be ashamed of his nephew:

I changed to Netflix and watched an hour-long episode of a series that I had followed.

I did this without switching back or even looking at my phone to check on the Series. It was during pitching changes in the top of the fifth when I bailed. An hour later, I returned and it was the commercial break in the middle of the sixth.

An hour — maybe seven outs. God bless America's pastime, but it was dying from self-inflicted wounds.

The first change that came from Rob Manfred's Commissioner's Office in 2021 was relievers being required to face three batters (unless they ended an inning). Take that, you devilish Tampa Bay Rays.

The change to a 13-pitcher limit on a 26-player roster was set for 2022. There was so much whining from managers that the rule was not implemented until June 20.

Still, games were going on endlessly, and fewer eyes than ever were watching as baseball's postseason dawdled along.

There were several proposals to cure this problem. Jim Kaat, a Hall of Fame pitcher with a career that included a period as the game's fastest worker, went so far as to suggest 7-inning games. John Castino emailed me last winter encouraging three balls to be a walk, and that seemed to have potential.

And then Major League Baseball announced the game would be played by a pitch clock in 2023 — 15 seconds to deliver with the bases empty, 20 seconds with a runner on.

This week, the Nobel Prize committee announced an award for COVID-19 vaccine pioneers. I'm not going to argue with that; I just hope that Manfred and the pitch clock pioneers were given some consideration.

This traditionalist has been defeated, and happily so.

Pitch clock. 100%.

Shift rule. 100%.

Limit on mound disengagements (required for pitch clock to be effective). 100%.

My only complaint is a small one: That last rule has not only brought back stolen bases, but cheapened them considerably.

Small price to pay for reducing dead time by almost a half-hour per game.

The fact baseball was making itself watchable again wasn't lost on the public. Attendance was up by 9% this season.

This has left me so giddy that I'm even OK with six teams per league in the playoffs. That seems like a valid number, because most years there's going to be the winner of a lousy division that deserves to be in the wild-card round.

That was the Twins in 2023, and so what? Heckuva ball game Tuesday to end the postseason trauma, and it took only 2 hours, 40 minutes. 100%.