In the good old days, and by that I mean like three weeks ago, these kind of quotes from baseball commissioner Rob Manfred would have caused much consternation.
“Experiment.”
“Think creatively.”
“Nothing’s off the table.”
The Tinkerer in Chief mentioned all three in a recent ESPN interview, as the conversation shifted from the agreement major-league owners and players worked out for the current coronavirus pause, to what baseball could look like when — no, if — America’s pastime resumes play in 2020.
Usually, the best thing to do when Manfred and his change-the-game accomplices start veering too far from the middle of the road is to sound the alarms and hope a tidal wave of common sense washes away the mess.