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Rob Manfred has once again reinforced why baseball fans think he is, hands down, the worst commissioner in all of professional sports. In 2015, the Major League Baseball commissioner literally ripped the very “Golden At-Bat” rule he is now promoting as having “buzz” around it.
In case you missed it, earlier this week, Rob Manfred said, “There are a variety of (rule change ideas) that are being talked about out there. One of them — there was a little buzz around it at an owners’ meeting — was the idea of a Golden At-Bat.”
The “Golden At-Bat Rule,” according to Jayson Stark of The Athletic, would allow a team to cherry pick what batter they want to come up to the plate at some point in a given baseball game.
For instance, each team could pick one at-bat, at any point in the game, but only once, do use this rule. Another possible example of how the rule might be used involves each team getting one “Golden At-Bat” per game, but only in the seventh inning or later.
If any of that sounds like a horrible idea, you’re not alone in that way of thinking. In fact, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred thinks it’s a horrible idea too. Or, at least he did in 2015 when Jon “Stugotz” Weiner proposed almost that very same idea to him in a video that was unearthed by The Dan Le Batard Show on Wednesday.
“I want to implement what I like to call the ‘Magic At-Bat,” Stugotz told Manfred in 2015. Basically his idea was that each manager, at any time during the game can pick a player to bat. His example was wanting someone that fans want to see more of, like Giancarlo Stanton, then playing for the Miami Marlins, to get more than the normal four or five at-bats in a game.
“You’re wasting my time. It’s a crazy idea,” Rob Manfred replied, adding that when making rule changes such as that, “You have to ask yourself the question of whether you are interfering with the history and traditions of the game. And I think the suggestion that you just floated would fall squarely in the category of would interfere with the history and traditions of the game.”
"You're wasting my time…" – MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred to @stugotz790 back in 2015 when Stu first presented his idea for the "Magic At-Bat" in audio we just unearthed. Manfred recently said MLB is considering a rule change called….The Golden At-Bat.
WATCH:… pic.twitter.com/wOMaX0OtQ6
— Dan Le Batard Show with Stugotz (@LeBatardShow) December 4, 2024
Of course, as we have seen time and time and time and time again, Rob Manfred has no interest in maintaining the history and traditions of baseball, so don’t be surprised to see this rule (the idea of which Dan Le Batard claims was stolen from his show) implemented in the very near future.