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I was walking the dog last night in the 10th inning with my laptop in her wagon. (She's lost most of her mobility, so "walking" her means taking her to one of her favorite neighborhood pooing spots in a wagon and placing her on the grass, but that's besides the point.) I was following the game and lost the signal as I exited my Wi-Fi range about a second after the winning run scored — which was, kind of, you know, merciful.
But it doesn't mean I didn't sleep on it. And by "sleep" I mean both my limited sleeping hours and my greater number of laying-down-awake-on-my-mattress hours, cogitating on that bizarre loss. And the nature of it.
And that nature of it is that, well, Josh Walker lost the game. But he didn't lose to the Royals really. Not if we're being fair. He lost to the clusterfuck of ancillary, barely baseball-related concerns that is baseball in 2023.
He comes into the very worst of situations — with the winning run on third, just up from the minors. But hey, that's baseball. That's the drama we pay to see. He quickly goes over the approach to the batter with a manager who barely knows him and a catcher he's rarely worked with. They're on the clock. He takes his strictly counted warmup pitches. That's the game. But then a domino-effect of extra-curricular shit hits. His pitch-com fails. I'm not keeping stats, but after a season and two thirds of this new technology, the failure rate of this device is about 35% when new pitchers come into the game, which apart from screwing up the game, certainly creates pace-of-play issues.
It's 2023. Digital communication is everywhere. We rely on it for everything. It's been part of the NFL for generations, but here in MLB we seemingly have a 35% failure rate and a crisis each time.
But my concern isn't telecommunications. It's the game. And this pitcher and his catcher can't communicate, and that's not a good recipe for good baseball. They haven't established hand signals, so he's in a fix. And he's already become set. He needs to signal without balking that he's dead in the water. What he needs is for his catcher to signal that, but he has no rapport yet with his catcher and the catcher hasn't yet done so. The catcher may not even realize it yet.
And the clock is counting down.
He can't afford an automatic ball! He's got the PitchCom screwing him one way and the clock trying to screw him another. This is a classic step-off-and-regroup situation if there ever was one. BUT THEY'RE COUNTING DISENGAGEMENTS NOW. You have to conserve your disengagements or you're going to give the runners a free base! And that free base is home plate with the winning run!!
So you sort of really don't want to do that. But you get two disengagements before the penalty kicks in on the third one, so he'll use that if he has to. Hopefully he doesn't have to, but he prepares to do that if it comes to it. And damn it, the pitch clock is ticking down. And I just got off the plane, and I'm going to go right back down if I screw this up, so don't waste those limited disengagements. But the pitch clock is winding down and I don't have an understanding with my catcher on what I'm going to throw, or any communications with him whatsoever.
Yeah, I just switched to the first-person voice there, but that's what happens to a fan in such moments. They become the athlete in their own heads.
So fuck it, his mind commits to using that disengagement. (I'm back in the third person because I suddenly realize I'm watching a car about to wreck.) And, and, and ... just as his brain has begun sending that signal to his leg, his eye tells his brain, that he's finally seeing the catcher signal to the ump that communications have failed. His brain tries to stop the signal to his leg, but it's too late. HE TWITCHES! With no intent to deceive any runner, he twitches. Without even intending to pitch or throw a pickoff attempt, he has balked. And that brain that couldn't manage to navigate all of these not-very-basebally concerns while simultaneously working through the most dramatic of baseball situations does the only thing left for a brain to do, and it sends a message to the heart and soul to pray that nobody saw the twitch. But it's in vain. Everybody saw. Two umps called the balk, and the two others should have called it, but were delayed by pity, and then thankful that the other guys called it because they knew the call that had to be made but were delayed by pity. They would have called it a second later, knowing the prayer they would be spurning in the process. But now they can sleep more soundly. It's the other guys who put those tears in Josh Walker's pretty blue eyes.
Josh Walker lost without throwing a pitch. He lost, although not, you know, credited with the loss, as it were. He twitched and that's against the rules and that's tough. But it wasn't the Royals that came down on him and got the win. I mean they loaded the bases and that's not nothing. Actually, they just loaded two of the bases, so things were already getting stupid before the inning had begun. But who is the hero here? Who does the field reporter wire up for the post-game interview?
It wasn't any Royal, that's for sure. It was the strange vicissitudes of baseball in 2023. Rob Manfred is an easy target, and it shouldn't be all about him. But that's the gig. This weirdness is his weirdness. These changes have his signature. Toss the Gatorade on Rob Manfred. Manfred for win. Wire him up and let's talk about it. The strange, stupid, bizarre-assed win.
This is why I don't sleep.
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