Manfred Has A New Excuse For Long Games: Slow Bat Boys & Bat Girls

MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred, in his tiredless and thankless crusade to make watching professional baseball as enjoyable as possible for fans of all ages, has identified another reason why the length of games have been steadily increasing over recent decades: the bat boys and bat girls are too fucking slow.

Well, Manfred is putting the brakes on that gravy train. He's going to make these teenagers being paid minimum wage (of course) perform like disposable Amazon employees with full bladders, who are  regularly forced to work at an inhumane pace or be fired on the spot. Remember: You can't spell Manfred without "fan".

A clarification memo from MLB states, in part:

• New standards will be enforced for bat boys and bat girls, whose ability to quickly retrieve equipment will help efforts to speed up the game, according to the memo. The league will evaluate the performances of bat boys and bat girls and could ask teams to replace them if their performance is considered substandard.

Wouldn't it be a wonderful world if Manfred decided that other people doing stuff during a major league game, like, oh, I don't know, umpires, were judged by similar performance evaluations and replaced "if their performance is considered substandard"?

At the moment, blown ball-strike calls by plate umpires are so regular you could set your watch by them. The outcome of every major league game is likely affected by the constant errors committed by these incompetent assclowns, but there's apparently nothing that can be done about it. 

However, those kids aren't part of a union, so Manfred'll happily bust their balls.

I despise this news almost as much as Manfred despises baseball

— Evan (@EFried8) March 22, 2023