https://nebraskapressjournals.unl.edu/nine-cfp/
... we invite you to contribute to an upcoming special issue of NINE...
Submissions should be between 1500 and 5000 words, double-spaced, in a Word document. Please send submissions to NINE editor Willie Steele at willie.steele@lipscomb.edu by July 19, 2020. Authors will be notified in August of their inclusion into this special issue.
__________________________
You can't make up stuff like this. Double spaced, mind you.
I thought of showing my disdain by writing something I knew would be rejected anyway and sending them a link to the file. I guess this is it.
Now to the subject matter. The call is obviously expecting yet another sappy stream of stuff with titles of baseball is ... this is where you fill in your sappy metaphor.
But baseball is nothing if not dumb. So are baseball fans, which prompts the question: Are we baseball fans because we are dumb or does being baseball fans make us dumb?
The current expression of near universal dumbness is the cheating scandal, which is based on the inalienable right of grown men to communicate by wiggling their fingers in secret about something that's hardly a secret. This because a team stole signs when playing at home. Since there are 30 teams, this might have an impact on one sixtieth of games. Less if you actually look at the home/road hitting splits of the cheaters. Or check the anecdotal examples. One pitcher's career ends, except the cheaters are on the road. Another shows an opposing pitcher getting suspicious, except he's the seventh of eight pitchers who held the cheaters to one run and beat them.
Freddie Freeman, your friend pitched in Arizona against the Astros, not in Houston where they stole signs. Monday, January 27, 2020
Astros lost 2017 game featured as example of cheating. Monday, January 13, 2020
Freddie Freeman, your friend pitched in Arizona against the Astros, not in Houston where they stole signs. Monday, January 27, 2020
Astros lost 2017 game featured as example of cheating. Monday, January 13, 2020
Ignored is the much more fundamental challenge to the basic integrity of the game: tanking (trading their best players). In recent years one third of teams tank with one third of the season remaining. Maybe if the trades were made by general managers wiggling their fingers, people would be outraged.
I'll rattle off a few fixes to dumb things:
- no "free substitution", i.e., players may not return; let them
- catching position should never have been created; eliminate it; obviously, no stealing; base runners may not leave until the ball is hit, like slow pitch softball
- pitchers should stand on flat ground and throw from behind the middle of the diamond: about 63.5 feet to the back of home plate
- the strike zone in imaginary and therefor ridiculous; eliminate it
- call strikes based on whether the pitch hits a fixed round target (think archery) behind home plate, yes, the same same size for all batters, who may ask for it to be raised or lowered to be between their knees at the bottom or shoulders at the top; in other words, the batter may choose a low or high strike "zone", as was done for a while in the 1800s
- eliminate the lefty hitters batter's box so that all batters run the same distance to the bases
- make outfield distances, i.e., home run distances, the same in all directions in all parks with walls the same height all around
- eliminate dead time, especially between each pitch:
- you step out, you're out
- pitch right away or it's a ball
- stuff like that; maybe start the count at 3-2
- replace designated hitter with designated fielder: 8 men bat.
Geographic realignment, of course. And eliminate five team divisions. Nothing less than eight teams, which means adding two teams. Each team in a division must play the same schedule as each other team in that division.
That's enough for something that won't be published. It's not between 1500 and 5000 words, double-spaced, in a Word document.
I'll rattle off a few fixes to dumb things:
- no "free substitution", i.e., players may not return; let them
- catching position should never have been created; eliminate it; obviously, no stealing; base runners may not leave until the ball is hit, like slow pitch softball
- pitchers should stand on flat ground and throw from behind the middle of the diamond: about 63.5 feet to the back of home plate
- the strike zone in imaginary and therefor ridiculous; eliminate it
- call strikes based on whether the pitch hits a fixed round target (think archery) behind home plate, yes, the same same size for all batters, who may ask for it to be raised or lowered to be between their knees at the bottom or shoulders at the top; in other words, the batter may choose a low or high strike "zone", as was done for a while in the 1800s
- eliminate the lefty hitters batter's box so that all batters run the same distance to the bases
- make outfield distances, i.e., home run distances, the same in all directions in all parks with walls the same height all around
- eliminate dead time, especially between each pitch:
- you step out, you're out
- pitch right away or it's a ball
- stuff like that; maybe start the count at 3-2
- replace designated hitter with designated fielder: 8 men bat.
Geographic realignment, of course. And eliminate five team divisions. Nothing less than eight teams, which means adding two teams. Each team in a division must play the same schedule as each other team in that division.
That's enough for something that won't be published. It's not between 1500 and 5000 words, double-spaced, in a Word document.
No comments:
Post a Comment