With the World Series neck-and-neck, baseball fans around the world are on the edge of their seats as two incredible pools of talent duke it out to see who is the greatest of them all. But there’s some terrible news that’s about to devastate baseball lovers everywhere: The MLB is calling it quits after multiple players have complained that it is simply too hard to hit the ball.
Oof. Sounds like America’s pastime just became America’s last time.
In place of tonight’s World Series game, the MLB will be running a graphic that states:
“We regret to inform World Series viewers that as of this afternoon, the MLB and professional baseball as a whole have come to an end. This is due to the concerns we have been hearing from many of the top players in the league that it is simply too hard to hit the ball. They claim that the ball is too small and moving too fast to ever really hit it, and after reviewing countless hours of footage, we tend to agree. Thank you for the past 149 years. Peace.”
While they only recently became public knowledge, concerns that the tiny baseball was whizzing by way too fast to hit it with that skinny little bat have been commonplace amongst players of the sport for many years. “The ball is no bigger than an apple,” said Los Angeles Dodgers designated hitter and pitcher Shohei Ohtani. “I train hard, I get plenty of sleep, I think about hitting it all the time, but I can barely ever do it. To make matters worse, they only give us three tries. I would always say, ‘Guys, this is just never going to happen.’” Toronto Blue Jays manager John Schneider agreed. “Look, if you’ve got the best of the best—athletes who we are paying millions of dollars, the elites of the sport—and they’re only hitting that ball like once out of every five or six swings, and even then a lot of times it’s a foul ball? It’s time to stop even trying. This whole thing is futile.” MLB commissioner Rob Manfred added, “Baseball was fun, but ultimately it was a failed experiment. No one could hit that thing, and no one was ever going to.”
Darn. Well, they tried!
So, former baseball fans, what do you think? Should the MLB have tried to find ways that the players could actually hit the ball, such as throwing out a bunch of balls at once, or letting them keep going until they cracked a home run? Or is it best to just let baseball go the way of the dodo and focus on sports like basketball where the players are able to regularly do the thing they’re supposed to be doing? Let us know in the comments!
