Story & Photo by Brittany Ghiroli | The Athletic
It started as all great ideas do: in a Twitter thread.
In truth, I was prepared to drop my opinion (or “hot take” as the kids call it) and just ignore the replies. Surely, the pitchforks and “baseball is sacred!!!” crowd were ready to assemble, call me a selfish beat writer and claim it’s always been-done-this-way-so-it-must-always-be-done-this-way. Who will tell that crowd the rules in baseball are changed and manipulated every year? That 162 games is a made-up number, just like 148 was? That no one is still certain what kind of slides into second base are “allowed,” or why 100 pitches is the barometer for starting pitchers, and how one-batter relievers were never a thing and then they were very important and now they’re going to go away again?
