In an attempt to reduce the length of Major League Baseball games, which in 2021 are running an average of 3.2 hours, MLB commish Jerky Tubbins Jr. has plans to introduce a new, more tightly wound baseball for the 2022 season.
‘The new ball is designed to be literally unhittable,’ claimed Mr. Tubbins in a July 4th press conference. ‘Without all those pesky runners the games will be over in the blink of an eye, and fans can go home.’
According to the MLB rulebook 5.05, in baseball a hitter becomes a runner when he hits a fair ball. If hitters can literally not make contact with the ball, there can be no pesky runners.
MLB calculates that average gametime will be shortened to around 45 minutes with the introduction of the new baseballs.
However, Baseball By My Rules pundit Susan Rafferby has warned of possible awkward ramifications unforseen by Major League Baseball.
‘If there are no hits, and walks remain at the current average of 2.45 per game, it will become literally impossible to score runs,’ she wrote in a recent article, ‘which means that games will not end after 45 minutes, but continue forever, and ever, and ever.’
According to the MLB rulebook 7.01b, ‘If the score is tied after nine completed innings play shall continue until (1) the visiting team has scored more total runs than the home team at the end of a completed inning, or (2) the home team scores the winning run in an uncompleted inning,’ which would be impossible in a game without any runs scored.
Writes Ms. Rafferby, ‘The 2022 season would be the last in the history of MLB.’
Photo by Jose Morales on Unsplash