In a drastic move to make the game more appealing to a wider audience, Major League Baseball has announced a series of new rules. Most notable among these new regulations is a rule requiring that games be finished in under five minutes time. Commissioner Manfred was kind enough to give us his thoughts on the new regulations.
“Well, as you know, we’ve been trying to shorten the length of games for some time now. In the past, we figured people who never liked baseball would all of a sudden like baseball if the games were two hours and forty-five minutes instead of three, but we were wrong. We didn’t go far enough. We didn’t take into account who these people are, and where there attention lies. After some research, we came to understand that most people can only pay attention to something for a few minutes. The average YouTube video is about four minutes, which was really key for us to understand. That’s the hit zone. That’s our audience. All of these people who are watching cat videos and prankster videos, we think we can get them to watch baseball.”
In order to accommodate the five minute rule, MLB has decided to just eliminate the pitcher entirely. There will now be a machine set up on the mound which will pump heaters in at 150 mph. Each team will send one batter up at a time, who will get one swing to try and park one. The teams will alternate swings until a dinger has been launched. If no dinger is launched at the end of five minutes, the game will end in a tie and both teams will play a friendly game of scrabble around third base, which will be streamed live on Twitch.
The Mad Satirist 