I Think This Little Leaguer Just Broke Baseball
After roughly a kabillion baseball games played around the world at a zillion different levels, it appears that it was a kid from Venezuela that finally cracked the code written by Abner Doubleday in Cooperstown. Despite 180 years of changes to the players, equipment, and stadiums, a groundball to third is still a bang-bang play and you cannot win a game until you register every out necessary.
However, little Delvis Ordonez figured out how to defeat the called strike by shrinking his strike zone into the size of a dime without having to be a Short. And to be honest, I don’t hate it. Either you evolve with the times or get left behind and D-Money’s baseball brain is firmly in the year 3000. I read a lot of grown men that said they would put one in this kid’s earhole, fight his coach, or call every pitch a strike until this kid had the GUMPTION to stand up straight. But I bet those are the same people that would have cried witchcraft and burned the first player to they saw throw a breaking pitch or hit from both sides of the plate at the stake next to the slightly crazy women they dubbed as witches.
Will it suck watching every team turn into little Delvises once they are down to their final strike, followed by the opposing team doing the same, until every team is squatting their cleanup hitters because a walk is just as good as a hit and a million times better than a potential out until baseball just becomes a non-stop walkfest? Of course. But that’s just baseball baby. Sabermetrics has given birth to nonstop shifts and home run or bust game plans in order to give teams advantages no matter how ugly it makes the game. So I imagine they will say the same for the D-Baby approach. In fact I hope the Mets institute this exact strategy for the rest of the season and we’ll worry about the future of the sport while the champagne stings their eyes in late October.
Orrrrrr maybe it was just a 12 year old having some fun in the Little League World Series and he was giving himself up on the first pitch like a player who keeps his bat on his shoulder since it was called a strike anyway.
Phew, that was close. Crisis averted and national pastime saved. You guys tell all the angry people on Twitter to put their pitchforks away and I’ll try to stop Goose Gossage from getting on his flight to Williamsport to put one in little Delvis’ ear.