POLITICO NIGHTLY: Baseball's grand experiment

 

BY CALDER MCHUGH Presented by A pitch clock counts down during the sixth inning of a spring training baseball game on February 24, 2023 in Peoria, Arizona. | Steph Chambers/Getty Images ON THE CLOCK — Major League Baseball is gearing up to experiment with the largest changes to the game in at least a half-century — and maybe ever. As spring training unfolds this year, the sport known for its languid pace is trying to speed things up to remain relevant in an ever-accelerating world. Among a host of rule changes , the most notable is the pitch clock, a rule that’s complex in its implementation but simple in its purpose: MLB games need to get shorter. If you’re not a fan of the sport, these tweaks might go undetected (and, let’s be honest, the games might continue to feel interminable). But the change in regulation has stirred up in fans a debate that’s about much more than baseball. The sport, for many, is wrapped up in visions of summer, childhood and a kind of quintessence of America. For a certain kind of fan, any changes — more than changes to any other sport — are assaults on all of those ideas as well. In the 1970s, a famous Chevrolet campaign declared that the Chevy was as American as “baseball, hot dogs and apple pie.” As far as popularity is concerned, baseball no longer occupies the top of that pyramid (neither do hot dogs, apple pie or Chevy, by the way). Some of the national pastime’s decline is overstated: a lot of people are still going to games and watching them on television, too. But an average of 12 million people watched 2022 World Series games, compared to over 113 million people who watched the 2023 Super Bowl. Despite some strong local markets, baseball knows it needs to draw more eyes to the game. Which is why MLB brass is training its attention on the ballooning length of ball games. After experiments with the pitch clock in the minor leagues since 2015 (where it worked and shortened the average time of a game by 25 minutes), the pitch clock debuted in the major leagues this month, before the March 30 start of the regular season. As teams play a series of exhibition games to gear up for Opening Day, it appears to be working on baseball’s biggest stage. In the past two seasons, baseball’s spring training games were almost exactly three hours on average. Thus far in 2023, they’re clocking in at 2:39. Likely to MLB’s delight, social media is filled with people having fun with the new rules. There are videos comparing one pitcher throwing an entire half inning (getting three outs) this spring, to another who throws just one pitch in the same amount of time. The rule changes are welcome for fans who don’t want to sit through games that drag on to four hours. Some baseball purists, though, are grousing — baseball was the one major American sport without a clock of any sort, they argue; the new pace lessens the tension and takes some strategy out of the game. The truth, however, is that baseball already looks a lot different today than it did in the 1970s. An analytical revolution beginning in the early 2000s resulted in hitters who can hit a lot of home runs and draw a lot of walks (and often strike out a lot as well). Pitchers throw harder but, in an effort to preserve their arms, also throw less. In 1976, the average length of a baseball game was 2:29. In 2021, the average was 3:11. The purists’ complaints boil down less to the actual product on the field and more to the idea of change in a corner of American life that has long resisted it — many enjoy the experience of sitting in the stands without a clock governing their lives for a few hours. The game’s history is bound up in visions of a nostalgic past far more than any other American sport. For those who believe in the power of the game, it remains a romantic pursuit, transcending worldly questions like the problem of decreasing attention spans. It intrigues people with an eye for sweeping narratives. It’s no coincidence that baseball has produced, over the years, some of the best writing on any American subject , full stop. So, when baseball’s governors decide to make alterations, it can feel to its biggest fans like a betrayal. Whether the new rules are successful will depend on whether new jolts of action can work in concert with the sport's existing governing principles. From Nightly’s perspective, the small tweaks likely won’t destroy the magic. As long as kids can still get some mustard on their shirts while staying up a little past their bedtime on a warm night, we remain hopeful that this new version of baseball can work. Welcome to POLITICO Nightly. Reach out with news, tips and ideas at nightly@politico.com . Or contact tonight’s author at cmchugh@politico.com or on Twitter at @caldermchugh .   STEP INSIDE THE WEST WING : What's really happening in West Wing offices? Find out who's up, who's down, and who really has the president’s ear in our West Wing Playbook newsletter, the insider's guide to the Biden White House and Cabinet. For buzzy nuggets and details that you won't find anywhere else, subscribe today .     AROUND THE WORLD — Hunter Biden files response against computer repair shop owner: The president’s son has filed a countersuit against a computer repair shop owner, alleging invasion of privacy in response to an ongoing defamation suit filed by the shop owner last year . The suit marks Biden’s first legal filing since his laptop has become a point of interest. In the 42-page legal filing Friday morning, attorneys for Biden assert six counterclaims, alleging that computer repairman John Paul Mac Isaac had no legal right to obtain and distribute data from Biden’s laptop, an issue that became central in the weeks leading up to the 2020 presidential election. — House GOP ignored Capitol Police requests to review public Jan. 6 footage : House Republicans ignored the Capitol Police’s repeated requests to review and approve any Jan. 6 security footage they planned to release publicly, the force’s top lawyer asserted in a sworn affidavit filed Friday . Only one of the more than 40 riot clips that Fox News’ Tucker Carlson aired earlier this month using access granted by House Republicans got previewed and approved beforehand, according to Capitol Police general counsel Thomas DiBiase. — China’s Xi to visit Putin in Russia next week: Chinese President Xi Jinping will pay a three-day visit to his Russian counterpart Vladimir Putin next week, Beijing and Moscow announced Friday, with “strategic cooperation” on the agenda . Neither country confirmed previous reports from the Wall Street Journal that Xi would use the opportunity to call Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy — in what would be the first communication between the two leaders since Russia launched its full-scale invasion of Ukraine last February. While China was initially committed to a “no-limit partnership” passed with Moscow days before the beginning of the war in Ukraine, Beijing has since sought to position itself as a peace broker, introducing a 12-point plan for peace. A message from Alibaba: Thousands of American businesses partner with Alibaba to sell their products to over 1 billion consumers in China. In fact, last year, U.S. sales to Chinese consumers on Alibaba supported 390,000 U.S. jobs, $31 billion in American wages, and added $47 billion to the U.S. GDP. Learn about Alibaba’s positive impact on the U.S. economy.   NIGHTLY ROAD TO 2024 FEAR FACTOR — Most of Congress’ Sunshine State Republicans have a line ready if you ask whether they prefer Donald Trump or Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis: “The next president will be from Florida.” Ask them who that president will be, though, and you rarely get a firm answer. The Florida delegation’s 20 House GOP members are clearly wary of choosing sides between the party’s two heavyweight 2024 contenders, reports POLITICO’s Olivia Beavers, as the former president takes shots at their governor even before he formally enters the race . And it’s not hard to figure out why lawmakers are staying out of it — a wrong decision risks political repercussions. HAWK-ISH — DeSantis, a likely contender for president, has begun to move away from the hawkish rhetoric he employed through his three terms in Congress. In Washington, DeSantis’ positions demonstrated a worldview that promoted the projection of American strength, particularly in defense of allies against their enemies, but allowed for limits on the use of that power. NBC News writes that DeSantis' pivot away from those positions amid an anticipated presidential campaign has drawn arrows not only from rivals but from boosters like the editorial board of The Wall Street Journal . THREE QUESTIONS WITH… Nightly spoke with Mike Madrid, a longtime Republican consultant and analyst of Latino voting trends. He is a co-founder of the Lincoln Project, an anti-Trump super PAC. How much of a threat does Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis pose to former President Donald Trump’s chances of winning the party nomination?   This latest round of February polling is showing that Trump is much stronger than conventional wisdom would dictate. He's much stronger than the sort of establishment Republicans who held their nose, supported Donald Trump and hoped that it would someday go away, and who are now investing in the DeSantis campaign. [Establishment Republicans] are going to have to wake up to the reality that Trump was not a fad. Trump was not an aberration. Trump is the Republican Party. And there's been no Republican candidate that’s been able to fill that void. There's a reason why the off-term elections show a decline, especially from rural, non-college educated white voters –– that is Trump's base. They don't show up for the Republican Party, they show up just for Donald Trump. And it just creates this really significant conundrum for the GOP where they're learning that mathematically, it's very hard to win with Trump and it's very hard to win without Trump. There are recent signs that Republicans are making gains with Latino voters. How much of a problem is this for the Democratic Party?  The Hispanic shift rightward is very real. But the real question to be asking politically is, can Democrats capture more white, college educated suburban women, than the blue collar Hispanic, non college educated males that they're losing? Those are the two moving pieces in American politics today. And they're very closely related to all the divides that we've historically talked about in American politics, the education divide, the gender gap and of course there’s the racial divide. And for the Republicans, it’s the exact opposite question. Can they pick up enough Hispanic votes while also limiting the leakage of their other suburban, college educated white base? And for the moment, this disadvantages Republicans more because numerically, there are more white college educated suburban women to lose than there are blue collar non college educated Hispanic men. But that’s not going to last forever. The biggest problem the Democrats have working against them is denial about it. Which Republican candidate would be easiest — and which would be the most difficult — for Biden to run against in the presidential election?   The actual differential between Republicans and Democrats in a presidential contest since the year 2000 has really been de minimis. But the fundamentals strongly suggest a Biden reelection. The first [reason] is it's incredibly difficult to beat an incumbent under the most extraordinary circumstances. And the second is if economic factors are going well, it almost becomes a lock barring something cataclysmic happening in foreign policy. The betting markets and strong fundamentals would really have to be, overwhelmingly leaning towards a Biden reelection campaign. He's stronger in Arizona. He's stronger in Georgia [and] I think North Carolina is a state that could actually come into play for the Democrats, given the direction where things are moving. So, look, DeSantis is probably a better general election candidate than Trump, but I still don't think he’s strong enough to beat an incumbent in this kind of election year.   A message from Alibaba:     AROUND THE WORLD Russian President Vladimir Putin, left, and Chinese President Xi Jinping talk to each other during their meeting in Beijing, China, on Feb. 4, 2022. | Pool photo by Alexei Druzhinin, Sputnik, Kremlin ICC ARREST WARRANT — The International Criminal Court (ICC) issued an arrest warrant Friday for Russian President Vladimir Putin over the forced transfer of children to Russia after the Kremlin’s invasion of Ukraine, POLITICO’s Nicolas Camut reports . Ukrainians accuse Russia of attempting genocide against them and seeking to destroy their identity — partly through deporting children to Russia. Putin is “allegedly responsible for the war crime of unlawful deportation of population (children)” and that of “unlawful transfer of population (children) from occupied areas of Ukraine to the Russian Federation,” the Hague-based court said in a statement Friday. ORIGIN STORY — New Chinese data on genetic samples taken in the Wuhan market in China in 2020 don't provide a definitive answer as to how the COVID-19 pandemic began, the World Health Organization (WHO) said Friday, following media reports that the data link the pandemic's origins to raccoon dogs at the market . The data in question was uploaded to the international virus database GISAID by the Chinese Center for Disease Control and Prevention in January, according to the WHO, but hastily removed following questions from international scientists. However, an analysis of the data by a team of international researchers, first reported by the Atlantic on Thursday, found that samples containing coronavirus also contained genetic material from animals, including raccoon dogs. This led to suggestions that raccoon dogs being sold at the market could have been carrying the virus, writes POLITICO’s Ashleigh Furlong. FINLAND IN — Turkey and Hungary announced Friday that they will sign off on Finland’s NATO membership — removing the biggest barrier to Finland’s joining the alliance but leaving Sweden’s bid languishing, reports POLITICO’s Lili Bayer . Erdoğan’s move will inevitably fuel concerns about the alliance’s cohesion as Sweden — which was originally invited to join together with Finland — gets left behind for the moment.   DOWNLOAD THE POLITICO MOBILE APP: Stay up to speed with the newly updated POLITICO mobile app, featuring timely political news, insights and analysis from the best journalists in the business. The sleek and navigable design offers a convenient way to access POLITICO's scoops and groundbreaking reporting. Don’t miss out on the app you can rely on for the news you need, reimagined. DOWNLOAD FOR iOS – DOWNLOAD FOR ANDROID .     890 The number of migrant bodies recovered by U.S. authorities along the border in the 2022 fiscal year that ended Sept. 30, a 58% increase over 2021 . RADAR SWEEP INFINITE MISINFORMATION — New AI systems such as ChatGPT, the overhauled Microsoft Bing search engine, and the reportedly soon-to-arrive GPT-4 have utterly captured the public imagination. But the public, and the tech giants, aren’t the only ones who have become enthralled with the Big Data–driven technology known as the large language model. Bad actors have taken note of the technology as well….Gary Marcus writes for the Atlantic that this is a moment of immense peril: Tech companies are rushing ahead to roll out buzzy new AI products, even after the problems with those products have been well documented for years and years. The potential scale of this problem is cause for worry . PARTING IMAGE On this day in 1992: Firemen and rescue workers walk through the debris of Israel’s Embassy in Buenos Aires, Argentina, after a terrorist bombed the building. | Don Rypka/AP Photo A message from Alibaba: Last year, U.S. businesses sold a record $66 billion in products to consumers in China on Alibaba’s e-commerce platforms, a nearly 10% increase over 2021. This included sales from thousands of American brands, big and small, such as boscia and Fender. Read how American businesses selling on Alibaba impacts the U.S. economy.     Follow us on Twitter Charlie Mahtesian @PoliticoCharlie Calder McHugh @calder_mchugh Katherine Long @katherinealong Ari Hawkins @_AriHawkins   FOLLOW US

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