As I sat in the Truist Park press box last week for the 2025 All-Star Game in Atlanta, watching the first home run swing-off unfold, my first inclination was what would Ted Williams have thought about all of it.
Williams won the 1941 All-Star Game for the American League with a walk-off homer in the bottom of the ninth at Detroit. The MVP award, given to Kyle Schwarber in Atlanta for his three homers on three swings that decided the game in what amounted to a mini home run derby, is named in Williams’ honor.
Knowing Williams well as I did late in his life, I’m sure he wouldn’t have liked it. He was a purist.
I, for one, liked the recent home run swing-off that decided the All-Star Game. It was entertaining, and as a progressive, I’m all for trying something different.
So did CC Sabathia, the former New Yankees pitcher who will be inducted Sunday into the National Baseball Hall of Fame along with Ichiro Suzuki, Billy Wagner, Dick Allen and Dave Parker behind the Clark Sports Center at Cooperstown, N.Y.
“I really enjoyed it,” he said during a Zoom call last Friday with members of the Baseball Writers’ Association of America, who voted him in back in January. “It was a lot of fun to see players jumping around and being excited at the end of the game. If that game ended on a sacrifice fly, it’s kind of like, meh.”
But this is my 50th season of covering MLB, which makes me a traditionalist at heart, and these changes to baseball—not just the All-Star Game changes, but the adjusted playoff format, eliminating Game 163 and deciding what team makes it by head-to-head competition—come at a heavy price.
The new All-Star Game format—instead of extra innings, deciding a game with a home-run swing-off—wouldn’t preclude a walk-off blast like Williams. But it would preclude the dramatic end of the 1994 All-Star Game in Pittsburgh’s old Three Rivers Stadium when Moises Alou doubled home Tony Gwynn with the winning run for the National League in the bottom of the 10th. Gwynn beat a relay throw from shortstop Cal Ripken Jr. as both great players and future Hall of Famers in the Class of 2007 played the entire game. That doesn’t happen anymore.
Aaron Judge and Shohei Ohtani left last week’s game early and weren’t even designated for the possible swing-off, an obvious hole in the current rules. Williams would have stayed. Is it impossible to ask the best of the best to hang around for that possible outcome?
As my friend Jane Leavy says in her new book, Make Me Commissioner, baseball should be fun, but not at the cost of its history. And some of the new rules have cost the sport a chance of replicating the greatest games in its annals.
These rule changes take away dramatic extra-inning All-Star finishes like the 1967 game at Anaheim won in the 15th inning for the NL on a Tony Perez homer off Catfish Hunter, end-of-season thrillers that include the Bobby Thomson shot heard ‘round the world at the Polo Grounds in 1951, and the Bucky Dent Game 163 at Fenway Park in 1978. They’ll never happen again.
As far as the playoffs are concerned, the tiebreakers for deciding everything from a division title to what team qualifies for one of three Wild Card berths between clubs is best head-to-head record against each other.
Classic Game 163, nevermore.
If that rule had been in effect in 1978, when the Yankees and Red Sox finished the regular season tied 99-63, the American League East would’ve have been decided in favor of the Yankees, who edged Boston in the season series, 9-7.
One of the greatest games in history—won for the Yanks by Dent and Reggie Jackson homers and a nearly three-inning Goose Gossage save—would have never been played.
The game of baseball continues to change, with pitch counts and injuries minimizing the chances of single-pitcher perfect games and no-hitters, not to mention complete games. The ABS system is dedicated to replacing umpires with an electronic system for automatically calling balls and strikes. The system is an obvious step forward, but has unintended consequences.
“Baseball is a game of human beings playing against human beings,” Ichiro said during his own Zoom call with baseball writers this past Friday. “To have that energy I hope remains part of the game. I value that, and it’s very important to me that the game still has the human element to it.”
The discussion of baseball’s evolution seems apropos as we approach this weekend’s annual Hall of Fame induction ceremony. Ichiro is the headliner of Sunday’s five-player Class of 2025, joining Sabathia and Wagner as the only living inductees; Parker and Allen will be going in posthumously.
Hall of Fame weekend celebrates the past, focusing on where the game has been. It’s staged in a barely reachable town in upstate New York that turns the clock back to the past century. The red-brick museum on Main Street displays artifacts of baseball’s past and the people who utilized them to become famous.
The awe-inspiring plaque room honors the 346 inductees—274 players, 39 executives and pioneers, and 10 umpires. It’s a very small sample size of the 21,000 players who’ve worn a Major League Baseball uniform since the NL was founded in 1876.
The Hall includes the best of the best, but not the banished Pete Rose and his all-time-leading 4,256 hits, or Barry Bonds and his record 762 home runs. Rose, who was suspended for gambling on baseball, was recently taken off the restricted list after his death last year, and he’s now eligible to be voted in. Bonds has thus far been barred by voters who are holding him and others responsible for MLB’s recent steroid era.
“The character of the games is what’s most important to me,” said Wagner, a reliever who will enter the Hall with 422 saves, the second most for a left-hander behind John Franco’s 424. “The game is always going to evolve. To me, the game on the field is as great as it’s ever been, but there will always be parts we like or don’t like in every era.”
Unintended consequences.
Now fast forward to the end of the 2024 season. The Atlanta Braves, New York Mets and Arizona Diamondbacks were locked in a three-way scrap for the last NL Wild Card berths as the regular season was about to end. The Mets and Braves had to play a make-up doubleheader in Atlanta while the D-backs gathered at Chase Field to learn their fate.
The Mets won the first game, clinching a berth, and benched most of their regulars in the second, won by Atlanta. They all finished 89-73. The D-backs, who lost the season series to the Mets and Braves, were eliminated.
Is this any way to play the game? Torey Lovullo, the manager of the D-backs, said this past Sunday he misses the old Game 163 tiebreaker, considering the way his club’s season ended last year.
“I’m going to say 100% yes,” Lovullo said. “It’s great for the game. I know they’ve expanded the format, so the days are condensed. But I’m a big proponent of the one-game knockout. I’ll endorse that for you.”
