Welcome to episode of episode 75 of the Charles C.W. Cook podcast. I'm joined this week by Rich Lowry, Michael

Brendan Doughty and Dominic Pino. And our topic today is going to be the rules of sports, particularly baseball, although we may

range further afield.

This was occasioned by our idle chatter at the end of a recent editors podcast, not recorded.

And Sarah Shetty told us that it should have been recorded. So I figured instead of

taking over the editors, we could take over my podcast and do it here instead. Now, the proximate cause

of this is a disagreement that has been percolating for a while in the pages of National Review over whether or not recent

innovations to the rules of baseball are salutary. And on the one side, as the traditionalist,

the conservative, the Chestertonian, if you will, is Dominic Pino, who I think I'm right

and saying hates all of the changes

that have been made. And on the other side is Rich Larry, who Dominic accuses of being a Jacobin

progressive revolutionary, who has never met an innovation he dislikes. I'm not quite sure where

Michael, Brendan Doughty sits on that matrix, but we will find out.

Now, a few days ago, it was leaked that Major League Baseball was considering introducing a golden at-bat.

The idea of this would be that at some point in the game,

perhaps at any point, perhaps only under certain circumstances,

a team could dispense with the logic of the lineup

and take a player that is considered to be its best hope

and just put him in at the plate to see if he could reverse their fortunes.

This, I think, was met with universal condemnation at National Review, but I'm not entirely sure.

But before we get to the golden at bat, I'm going to start by asking Dominic Pino to tell us

why he opposes all of the changes in baseball that have been brought in

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