Oh, Ma!

As readers of this space can attest, I have been all dewy eyed about our new manager, Ma Boone, from the start.

But I have to say, even Ma strains my patience with what have now become his almost daily efforts to rewrite the past, and celebrate the New Baseball.

Here, for instance, is part of the Yankees' hitting strategy that is working so wonderfully well, as described by Billywitz in the Times:  "Don't swing at a pitch unless you think it's a strike, even if it is a borderline pitch, even if it comes with two strikes. Yes, there might be some painful called third strikes, but over the course of 162 games, the benefits will largely outweigh the costs."

"The goal is to get on base and break the dam," Ma is reported as saying.  "The reward for getting on there versus swinging at a pitcher's pitch that you're not going to do anything with is a win if you have the discipline to lay off.  And it takes courage, because you're going to get rung up on a borderline pitch or maybe a pitch just off every now and then."

Uh-boy.

I just love these efforts to chuck about 150 years of baseball down the memory hole.

Swing or don't swing, those are the only choices, right?

Nope, nobody's ever heard of anything like "spoiling" a borderline pitch with two strikes on you, fouling off balls until the pitcher throws one that's a tad more hittable. Nope, never happened, the Ministry of Truth has declared that you imagined it.

Nor has anyone ever tried shortening their stroke, or going with the pitch on a two-strike count. Sorry, you dreamed that, too. And OF COURSE the role of all ballplayers, at all times, is to "get on base and break the dam."

You get on base by always going for the home run, and refusing to make any compromises with the situation. You take the strike, or you swing for the fences, and don't be embarrassed by the embarrassing results!

No contradiction here, none whatsoever!

And really, no one has a different role. You want your biggest power hitters and RBI men to be taking every at-bat just like the guys who specialize on getting on base and setting the table, so that ultimately the runs are driven in by...well, somebody, somewhere.  Someday.

Even worse, though, was Ma Boone claiming that while Aaron Judge, at least, might get punched out more than he deserved because of his ginormous strike zone, it wasn't up to him, the manager, to interfere in that.

Oh, he might ride the umps a little from the bench. But as for doing anything else to keep the men in blue honest, well, "each player would have to do it in his own way."

Sorry, Ma—it just doesn't work that way.

The umps are always going to have trouble judging the Judge's strike zone, especially with so many pitchers throwing harder than ever. Moreover, Judge is by personality a gentle giant, and you don't want your best player getting on the bad side of the umps in any case.

It's up to you, Ma, to man up, put on your best Billy Martin face, and go out there and ream them out after every terrible called third strike. Only when you do that—only when you give each and every home plate arbiter your meanest, nastiest, cap-turned-backwards, spittle-flecking verbal beat down—will you embarrass them enough into paying attention.

It's you who must put the thought in the back of their heads, "Hey, if I don't call this right, a rabid badger is going to emerge from the Yankees' dugout and attach himself to my leg in such a way that it will make all the ESPN highlights for the next two days. Along with the replay showing how badly I blew the call."

That's your job, Ma. Stop pretending it went out with Earl Weaver.