Ten Things I Hate About Baseball (2024 Edition)

By Eric Gouldsberry, This Great Game—Posted July 12, 2024

In 2018, I released a list of pet peeves, things that really bothered me in this otherwise great game of baseball. That was then; things have changed. Some of the items on that list have become irrelevant—a good example being my beef on why hitters weren’t bunting more against the shift, an argument since made moot by the banning of the shift—while others (strikeouts, excessive walk-off celebrations) I’ve just grown grudgingly used to. There is, in fact, only one holdover on this new list from 2018, and you’ll find out about it when you get there.

So, what bugs me now? The full list is as follows; see if you agree, or if I missed something along the way.

Digital tickets

There was always something magical about holding a printed baseball ticket, with its aura, aesthetics and mere physical presence making my eyes glow, like Charlie when he discovered he was going to the Chocolate Factory. But now, most everyone is asked to enter the gate via an app on a mobile phone, which strips away not only the romanticism of a printed ducat but the ability to save it as a memento—unless you somehow find a way to physically frame a non-fungible token. The counter-argument, from some, is that digital tickets are convenient—sure, until you arrive at the gate with your phone out of juice or a downed mobile service. Bottom line: I’d prefer saving stubs over scanning codes.

City Connect Jerseys

I’ll probably get some flak on this one because some fans love the far-alt uniforms that mostly resemble nothing in common with the standard jerseys used by MLB teams. I will agree, some of them are tastefully pleasing, such as those of the San Francisco Giants, Miami Marlins and Chicago White Sox. But for every one of agreeable kits, there’s the more hideous ones—like the aesthetic, yellow/sky blue antithesis worn by the Boston Red Sox, the all-blue Los Angeles Dodgers unis that make their players look like construction workers or male nurses, or the Care Bears pastels used by the San Diego Padres. City Connects? More like City Disconnects. You know who hasn’t developed a City Connect jersey yet? The New York Yankees. (Sustained applause.) Tradition should sometimes trump the till.

All-Star Jerseys

While I’ll likely arm-wrestle with many of you on the City Connects, I imagine we’ll be more in sync in our hatred for the special uniforms designed every year for the All-Star Game. In particular, the jerseys created for the 2024 Midsummer Classic are especially atrocious, looking like something a local printer would have ordered from a pre-fab apparel catalog for a weekend beer league. I know, MLB just wants to sell more jerseys and make another buck or two, but why anyone would buy these awful jerseys is beyond me. Can’t we just go back to the good old days when players wore the uniforms of the teams they represented?

Hitters Who Admire a Deep Fly Ball They’ve Just Hit

Don’t just stand there—run! That is, after all, what you’re supposed to do when you hit the ball. But some players just want to feed their ego watching at and gloating over a ball…that sometimes doesn’t clear the fence. That’s what I hope happens every time someone admires a long drive—because when it falls short of the wall and the batter is suddenly scrambling to avoid turning a double or triple into a single, it’s a glorious, well-deserved shot at their id.

Removing a Pitcher When He’s an Out Away from Qualifying for a Win

So, your pitcher isn’t quite at his best and is struggling to get through the fifth inning. But he really would like that third out to finish the frame and hope to earn credit for the win. Here’s where analytics run amok; the spreadsheet may say that there’s a better option in the bullpen to preserve that lead of one, two, three or more runs—but in this case, give the guy a chance to complete the fifth. After all, if you allow a closer having an iffy night to finish off the save, you should do the same for your starter here.

Extra-long Sliding Mitts

Did I miss something, or do baserunners suddenly have fingers the length of E.T.? I get that safety is a big concern and that nobody wants to jam or break a finger colliding with a base or fielder, but there’s something fishy when you see baserunners wearing mitts that seem to extend a good three inches or more beyond the tip of their fingers—and since baseball is considered a game of inches, that extra length can come in handy when trying to steal a base. This is clearly baseball’s most over-exaggerated equipment since Craig Biggio used an elbow guard the size of a trash can lid; at some point, MLB is going to have to break out the ruler—or allow infielders to counter by wearing Ruben Sierra-endorsed jai alai gloves.

Fathers Catching Balls While Holding Their Babies

A year doesn’t seem to go by without a video clip of some guy catching a foul or home run ball with one hand while holding his baby with the other. Yeah, it’s entertaining and generates a lot of clicks on the Internet. It’s also stupid and dangerous. As a father who raised two children, my inclination if put in that spot is to make protecting my child Priority #1. Someday, some idiot is going to try this same stunt and it’s going to end badly, because unlike those catching a ball while holding a beer in the other hand, you can’t go back to the concession stand and ask for another baby.

The NHL-ification of the Postseason

I’ve never been wild about the wild card, though I understand that with 30 MLB teams you got to invite some pretty good ballclubs that failed in their quest for first place. But we’ve gone from two wild cards in the mid-1990s to four in 2012 to, now, six since 2022. It’s all too much, as the Beatles once sang. Putting mediocre teams like the 2023 Arizona Diamondbacks and Miami Marlins—two ballclubs who barely finished above .500 and gave up more runs than they scored—in the mix for October glory extends the argument that an expanded postseason greatly devalues the 162-game regular season before it and reduces the odds of a potentially great World Series matchup. We thus sometimes end up with an all-wild card Fall Non-Classic, like the Arizona-Texas mashup of 2023. I know screaming about all this in front of an impenetrable corporate wall, while the MLB bigwigs on the other side count their postseason TV money, is futile. But it’s not going to keep me from ranting more at length on the topic—as I plan to do in a future Opinions piece.

In-game Interviews

This is the lone holdover from the 2018 list I teased about up top. I despised this concept then, and I still despise it now. It’s just uncomfortable to watch a ballplayer who’s trying to concentrate on a job some 15 others in the organization want, being asked questions no one really cares about. It’s like that pivotal scene in The Hunt for Red October when Alec Baldwin, being asked to steer the title sub as a torpedo approaches, is nonchalantly queried by sub skipper Sean Connery about his books. Okay, so the world isn’t at stake when a major leaguer is trying to focus on the next pitch while Karl Ravech asks him about his favorite hobbies—but his high-pressure job might be if he loses that focus while trying to answer the question at the same time.

The Gift Runner

It might be a bit of hyperbole describing most of the items on this list as things I “hate,” but not on this one. I hate the automatic runner on second base in extra innings. H-a-t-e. Hate. Hate. HATE. (Am I getting my point across?) This is the most absurd, ridiculous, gratuitous rule ever forged for this great game. To arbitrarily place a runner at second base at the start of every extra inning just so we have chance of getting home early goes against the sanctity of a game in which every run should be earned, not gifted thanks to a commissioner with a Little League mindset. Time can sometimes heal outrage, but not this. And I’m hardly alone with this opinion; while some have reluctantly come around to accept what I call the ‘gift runner,’ most still abhor the rule. Thank goodness that MLB has some smidgen of wisdom to sideline the gift runner during the postseason, which in a sense serves as a confession that the rule sucks. Hopefully when Rob Manfred steps down after the 2028 season, his successor will tell him to take the gift runner with him.