Welcome to The Opener, where every weekday morning you’ll get a fresh, topical column to start your day from one of SI.com’s MLB writers.
For 24 hours, MLB’s crackdown on foreign substances went perfectly smoothly.
When the new enforcement protocol went into effect Monday, it offered some natural rebuttals to a few of the loudest arguments against it. The idea that umpires’ impromptu checks of pitchers would drag down pace of play? The mini-patdowns took place at the end of innings, when the pitchers were already walking off the mound, and they were over in a matter of seconds.