Travis Hafner joined the Yankees this season. Maybe he's been doing it all along but I've noticed that he's taken jerking around to a new level. He not only steps out of the batter's box, he not only walks away, he turns his back on home plate and walks away.
And when I say away, he, like an alarmingly increasing number of batters, now walk a long distance from home plate after they step out of the box between pitches. Every pitch.
Do they realize that they are entertainers? Do they think watching them walk around instead of bat is entertainment, that it enhances the event?
What all this boils down to is that Major Baseball League (MBL) commissioner Bud Selig presides over the slow death of a once great game that has devolved into a torturous slow motion mess. Baseball is unwatchable in its current form.
And it's not like the MBL can make money during the 300 or so between pitch stoppages when batters take their walks and pitchers do their own version.
Some type of simple rule combined with actual enforcement, alien concepts to Selig's MBL, would be a step in the right direction. OK, not nearly as good as replacing pitchers with machines (more on that in a future post) but it could help.
Here's a common sense suggestion to keep the batter under control: except, of course, for running out a batted ball that goes foul, the batter must remain in the box until the plate appearance is complete. If the batter steps out, he is put out. That should do the trick.
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