The headline above quotes Ron Wotus, former San Francisco Giants bench and third base coach, when baseball savant Marty Lurie asked him about my proposed Run On Third Out (ROTO) rule.
I had emailed Lurie last week to promote ROTO. His reply said he was interested and would talk with Wotus about ROTO on Lurie’s “Talking Baseball” show on Giants flagship station KNBR before Sunday’s Giants game. (Their conversation is transcribed below.)
Both Lurie and Wotus opined that ROTO seems a bit radical and would take some getting used to if it were implemented, but the fact that ROTO had an airing on 50,000-watt KNBR – “THE Sports Leader” – was greatly encouraging.
Wotus zeroed in on ROTO’s essence – more action, more scoring, more strategy in a game that has become so boring that CLOCKS are now a core component of the game, which until this year was the only major sport free of all time constraints for the past 150 years! And that was a good thing.
New Rules Are a Travesty!
In my opinion, the pitcher and batter clocks are the worst thing that has ever happened to baseball and may in the long run ruin the sport. As TV play-by-play man Duane Kuiper said on KNBR last week, he's heard no complaints about longer game times from fans who actually attend games!
The view here is that MLB’s new time-constraining rules are fatally flawed and more radical by far than ROTO. With open minds and fertile imaginations, baseball can continue to evolve, but it will take more imagination that MLB’s leadership has heretofore revealed.
Ron Wotus had it exactly right: ROTO would introduce more action, more scoring, more throws, more excitement, and more strategy into a game – "a thinking man's game" – badly in need of all of that.
March 5 segment on Marty Lurie’s pregame show:
LURIE: Well, the fans love sending me emails with ideas. We respect them because they think through these things. I have a very passionate fan, Doug Carlson, who sent me an email, and I shared it with you (Ron Wotus), and he calls his proposal Run On Third Out.
Essentially what it would be is, when a fly ball is caught for the third out, if there’s a runner on third, he could tag up and score on the third out, because it gives you more runs in the game, there’s more action, more throws, all of that kind of stuff. If you have a guy on second and third, they both could tag up and try to score.
I threw this at you (Wotus) and I wanted to get your thoughts about it. I told Doug that this is a little radical, you know, it’s a little different, but in this world of baseball changing every 30 seconds, here we go.
WOTUS: That’s the point, and I appreciate Doug’s thought on this, as a lot of fans have, because the rules have changed so much. I’m telling you, the experience I have in the game, and with all these new rules, you have to study like you’re studying for a final exam. And as these nuances change and change, but back to Doug’s point. I think it would be very very difficult obviously to do. I think that it’s really kinda extreme in my opinion to let the guy tag up on the third out, but if you want excitement, you want more runs, more action – that would certainly bring more action, because nothing is more exciting than a play at the plate on a sac fly.
LURIE: Well, the way he has it, on a play at the plate, it’s more like a play at first base, so all you have to do is catch the ball and tag home plate before the guy gets there.
WOTUS: Well, that’s the way we used to play wiffelball, right? When you were in Brooklyn and we were hitting on the streets in pickup games, those were the types of things that we did.
LURIE: Exactly right, I did it in softball in San Francisco. All you have to do is tag the plate before the guys’ there, so that’s Doug’s idea. And I appreciate when people send me thoughts, because they’re very passionate. They’re baseball fans.
WOTUS: Well, they are, they are, you know baseball for me has always been a thinking man’s game, and this is where you’re getting people with these ideas. They see the rules being tweaked and changed, and people have opinions, so it’s great that he has a voice to go ahead and reach out to you, send you the email, and hear you talk about it.
LURIE: This would have driven you nuts as a third base coach.
WOTUS: Oh yeah, oh yeah. I would have been running off the field when the guy caught the ball. It’s not easy for me to adjust, so I’d have to have a rules packet in my back pocket to make sure I don’t screw that one up.
LURIE: Not only could he score with one out, he’s scoring with two outs. Keep you busy, let’s put it that way. Alright, Douglas, thank you for the thought, we do appreciate it.
And here my March 3 email to Marty Lurie that prompted his conversation with Ron Wotus:
Marty, the interest you've shown in my proposed Run On Third Out (ROTO) rule is the most encouraging development in all my outreach efforts going back to the 1970s. I'm sincerely grateful for your interest and would gladly participate in Sunday’s on-air discussion on ROTO with Ron Wotus as a resource to address questions and comments.
People who don't like my ROTO rule seem to think it would be too radical a change to existing rules, but my response is that ROTO is not radical at all. ROTO simply applies the same tag-up rule to all outs made by caught fly balls, a relatively minor addition that barely moves the change needle. What ROTO does do is introduce a new way to score, along with increased on-field action and excitement. That's what baseball needs.
The most radical thing that has ever happened to baseball is the introduction of the clock. The new timing rules show just how unimaginative MLB's leadership has been in addressing baseball's so-called "boring problem." To their credit, the elimination of radical shifts may prove to be a good change, but increasing the size of the bases is a gimmick that smacks of desperation. That change actually reduces the distance between bases, doesn't it? That seems less like an improvement and more like another gimmick (like the "gift runner" on second in extra innings) and radical stab at the game’s integrity.
Here again are ROTO’s key features:
· When a fly ball is caught for the third out in a half-inning, runners on base can tag up after the catch and attempt to score by running to home plate.
· The team in the field can prevent the run(s) from scoring by throwing and/or relaying the ball to the catcher, who touches the plate with his foot, which is how outs are recorded at first base and other bases on force plays.
· All runners on base when a third out is made by a caught fly ball can attempt to score after they tag up. (Baseball’s current rules allow runners on base to score on ground balls if they reach home without a third out being made at one of the bases.)
· Runner/catcher collisions at home plate would not be a factor, as tagging the runner would not be how the run is prevented.
· An at-bat team that unsuccessfully attempts to score using the ROTO rule would begin its next at-bat inning with one out already recorded against it.
Again, Marty, I’d welcome facing slings and arrows in a ROTO discussion on this or any other Sunday. I think even traditionalists might be open to ROTO now that Old Man Time is baseball's chief executive -- a radical shift like no other.
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