Michael Kay stood up for Rob Manfred’s “golden” idea that has risen to prominence over the last week.
Comments by the MLB commish about the “buzz” around the “Golden At-Bat Rule” on “The Varsity” podcast released last month have garnered plenty of headlines in recent days.
The potential idea, which is still in the “conversation-only stage,” would allow a team to pick one at-bat in every game to send up its best hitter even if it was not their turn to hit.
It has also drawn the ire of baseball traditionalists who bemoan even the slightest hint of change to the game of baseball, or at least that was the point Kay seemed to be getting at during a rant on his ESPN New York radio show on Tuesday.
Kay had taken notice of some of the responses — including from fellow broadcaster Howie Rose — on social media and fired back during his show.
Rose, this week, called out the idea on X as a “joke.”
“Is it perfect? No. Would I sign off on it? I probably wouldn’t. But imagine the outcry because a guy is trying to do something to juice a game that is trying to be juiced,” Kay said. “And all of the people who say this is like sacrilege… Guess what? We’ve got you. It’s the young people, we don’t have them. So we have to turn the ninth inning into an event where your best player is going up against the closer. And you see no value in that because nothing can change in baseball because it’s not a sport, it’s a religion.”
The baseball broadcaster didn’t stop there and continued to take aim at the baseball purists that don’t want to see anything change around the game.
“You all have to get your heads out of your butts. To jump a guy for trying to make a legitimate change,” Kay continued. “For thinking about a legitimate change. Even a guy I love, Howie Rose. ‘This has got to be a joke.’ No, the loss of baseball eyeballs. That’s a joke, Howie! There has got to be something to stop the erosion of this great game. You’ve got to make an appeal to more people. Younger people. Those are the people we do not have.
“And you’re gonna crucify Rob Manfred because he is thinking outside of the box. You all have to grow up. And you all have to open your eyes and see what’s happening with the game.”
