Baseball is dying. Last night's game is a big reason why.

 

Hey, I'll admit it upfront. If it was the Yankees who had come out on top of that snorefest last night, I would be feeling a lot more sanguine today about the state of the game, the state of the world, the outcome of the midterm elections, and my future health.

But win or lose, it doesn't excuse the fact that that game was excruciating. Three-hours-and-twenty-one minutes, featuring a combined 21 strikeouts, 4 walks (none by the Yankees), and 14 hits. 

It was the epitome of Three True Outcomes baseball, though all those strikeouts and walks did not portend a grand display of home run fireworks. Instead, there were all of two doubles and a "triple" that was in fact a routine fly ball, played by our centerfielder like man caught in a dust storm. The major Yankees rally, meanwhile, was created mostly by a Rays pitcher booting a routine bunt. 

Thanks to a change in the weather—and Harry Potter Night—there was a big, festive crowd of 42,192 on hand, and a hint of October baseball in the air. That dissipated quickly thanks to the listless, distracted play by both teams. 

Could that have been due to the latest, brave new MLB system of playoffs, in which the top 40 percent of teams in both leagues now make the postseason? No doubt, that took much of the urgency out of last night's contest—not to mention the fact that it seems to have lured the Yankees' general manager into a curious strategy of writing off August. 

Whatever the case, it quickly quieted the crowd, left so desperate for some sort of entertainment that it resorted to doing the wave in the later innings—then leaving, most of them, well before the last out. Who could blame them?

This wretched showing by the Yankees, of course, came on top of their perfunctory, 3-0 shutout loss to Boston the night before—one played in so quick and diffident a manner that it seemed more like a rumor than a game. One can well imagine what it must have been like to shell out the incredible prices that MLB requires now for admittance, and then sat through either of those performances. 

And yet, ads for tonight's game suggest that fans fork over still more money to watch on Amazon Prime's Streaming Video. Fortunately, there is an alternative venue on TBS, but that's still a cable channel. Fans without cable are out of luck. Fans with cable still have to search out other games on streaming and other, new, pay-per-view services—what my wife calls "cable's cable"—in order to see any baseball at all.  

This comes, mind you, at a time when MLB routinely accepts immense public subsidies to build new stadiums that keep getting smaller and smaller, so that more luxury boxes can be shoehorned inside. Imagine if a politician announced that he was spending hundreds of millions—even billions—in taxpayers' money to build a new public park...but one that will charge a high entrance fee that will constantly increase, while more and more of the park is roped off for the exclusive use of the very rich.

Yet, this is what we accept to see major-league baseball today.

And to see what, exactly?

It used to be that many fans went to games so they could show their kids the great Cobb/Ruth/DiMaggio, etc. My first two trips to the ballpark came when my father and uncle took me to see Mickey Mantle and  

Willie Mays, respectively. Later, when I was in high school, I took the train into Boston in two different seasons to watch the Red Sox play some very bad Brewers teams, just because it meant a chance to see the great Henry Aaron, even if he was drawing near to the end of his magnificent career.

I don't think anyone at last night's game is going to tell the grandchildren about any of the players they saw—with the possible exception of Aaron Judge. These were supposedly two of the best teams in the American League, but what a collection of mediocrities! 

The interminable, interchangeable procession of pitchers. The collision of one team hitting all of .242, the other, .238. Neither playing with anything resembling competence, much less inspiration. 

Maybe this is just what parity looks like. But I suspect that it is much more the result of raising players to be thoroughly one-dimensional, in the Three True Outcomes game—a game dominated by such meaningless statistics as "exit velo" and "spin rate." 

What it has produced is pitchers who throw harder than ever, with more movement on the ball...and who can't last five innings, can't pitch to contact, and inevitably shuttle off to have another Tommy John surgery. It means batters who twist themselves into corkscrews, trying to hit the ball out of the park on every swing—and who go down with constant pulls, strains, tweaks, aches. 

(And obviously, a great many of them are still trying to get through the rigors of the new game with performance-enhancing drugs, which will have a terrible effect on them—and on the children who imitate them—down the road.)

Lo and behold, it's August and yet another Yankees team is a mess of injuries, worn thin by the stretch drive. Gee, could it have something to do with the way these players are taught to play, and prepare?

The lords of MLB have decided to remake their sport in the image of football and basketball, games that have also been simplified and dumbed down. But they are played at an almost terrifying level of speed and violence, and thus retain their fan bases.

Baseball, on the other hand, just gets slower and more gimmicky. The regular season is about twice as long as those in basketball and hockey; almost ten times the length of a football season—and thus too long for a format in which everybody makes the playoffs, and much of the regular season is a glorified exhibition season. But here we are.

Teams have decided to cope with the new game in different ways. Some, such as the Washington Nationals, try bunching stars together for a quick run at the World Series, then disbanding them, expecting their fans to be content with the memories for the next five, ten, fifteen years—maybe longer.

Others, such as the Rays, count on continually bringing up promising young players—then dispatching them for even younger players, after a run or two. The Red Sox, of course, have hit upon a strategy of almost continuous deconstruction and rapid rebuilding. The Yankees have decided that just contending is good enough for them.

Very, very few teams actually give their fans the thrill of trying to put together a contender that will last for a few years, built around a solid pillar of beloved players. You'll never see a Core of Four on the Yankees or anybody else, ever again.  

Players, as players, have been turned into computer ciphers, mere pieces of an electronic calculation. It's impossible to feel sorry for them, of course. Most of them are paid ridiculous amounts of money, and complain about the smallest burdens and obligations that are placed upon them. The owners are outright thieves, who in a better world would be hounded out of civil society for their greed.

What I feel bad about is us, the fans, who are now constantly subjected to non-games—anti-games?—like the one last night, which we're just supposed to accept no matter what the price, or the waste of time.

Somehow, I don't think anyone will be writing songs about this generation of baseball.