Fly away, Goose: Baseball continues to evolve and the game’s better for it

If Goose Gossage had his way, presumably, baseball would consist primarily of bunts and brawls, with maybe a run or two mixed in, and only grizzled, stoic, mustached men dripping last night’s whiskey from their pores can play. Oh, and all players would wear onions on their belts, which was the style at the time when Gossage was building his Hall-of-Fame case.

On Thursday, as is his wont, the famously tone-deaf 66-year-old — who called Jose Bautista a “f — — — disgrace to the game” last year, then in February deemed “insulting” any comparison of him to Mariano Rivera — unleashed another tirade, this time lamenting the corruption of game by the scourge of strikeouts and home runs.

‘’It kills me. I can’t watch the game. It’s not baseball,’’ Gossage told the Associated Press. ‘’The only thing that’s the same in the game is the bases are 90 feet and the mound is 60 feet, 6 inches. That’s it.’’

Gossage, who never saw a cloud he didn’t want to yell at, continued.

‘’Everybody digs the long ball. If you struck out that many times back in the day, your (butt) would be back in the minor leagues,’’ said Gossage. ‘’I think these computers got these kids — they’re all like robots. You’re telling me that a guy, a professional hitter, can’t hit a ball the whole left or right side of an infield that’s gone? How about laying down five or six or 10 bunts, like Boog Powell would have done?’’

To summarize: strikeouts are bad, and bunting to beat a defensive shift is good, I think? And offensive approach has become too homogenized? This assault on the evolution of the game might at least be palatable if it posited some actual value judgment. Is the game less entertaining in its current iteration? (I’d contend that watching Giancarlo Stanton murder a baseball is more fun than watching a well-placed bunt). Is baseball today too … like, I don’t even know. What, exactly, is the problem here?

Also, forgiving the irony that Gossage was, himself, an elite strikeout pitcher — from 1977 through 1983, no pitcher, not even Nolan Ryan, had a higher strikeout rate — using Boog Powell to illustrate the failings of hitters nowadays is hilariously off-base. If you’re mad that the league is poised to set new records for both home runs (it happened last week) and strikeouts (it should happen this weekend), maybe don’t extol the virtues of one of the archetypal Three True Outcome hitters. In 1971, the year after he was named American League MVP, Powell either struck out, walked, or went yard in one-third (33 percent) of his plate appearances. That season, the league-average Three True Outcome rate was 24.7 percent.

Old men — old white men, in particular — have this infuriating tendency to canonize their own experience, perhaps to better position themselves, as the world passes them by, as martyrs and not curmudgeonly old farts. And so, to Gossage, baseball as it was played in the seventies and eighties is the how the game should be played, and any paradigmatic shift — like, say, a seismic culture shift precipitated by an influx of Latin-American players into the big leagues, or an increase in homers and strikeouts fueled by a stronger understanding of run expectancy — only serves to bastardize the game.

And, of course, he’s wrong. Hilariously wrong. Because, just like the distance between the bases, or between the mound and home plate, change has always been a constant in baseball. Until Babe Ruth came around, home runs weren’t really a thing. Find me a history book that tries to vilify Babe Ruth for corrupting the game. Until Jackie Robinson showed up, baseball was played exclusively by whites. Until Bob Gibson put up his 1.12 ERA in 1968, the pitcher’s mound was 15 inches tall.

Things change. The only thing that doesn’t, sadly, is Goose Gossage.