At the age of 29, Rich Lowry became William F. Buckley’s designed successor as editor of National Review, the magazine Buckley founded in 1955. He is currently editor-in-chief of the magazine. In his founding statement for the magazine, Buckley said of it:
It stands athwart history, yelling Stop, at a time when no other is inclined to do so, or to have much patience with those who so urge it.
For decades, National Review was a bastion of conservative thought, and in part defined its mission as purging the conservative movement of “kooks” in order to make it acceptable to the New York-Washington axis in which it was marinated. This included jettisoning the traditional libertarian, isolationist, and anti-war roots of conservatism and aligning with the Cold Warriors and invade the world allies of Big Government. In recent years, National Review has become synonymous with “cuckservatism” and has been hæmorrhaging writers and subscribers to other publications.
Now, standing amidst the wreckage of National Review conservatism and the ruins of the society it once defended, Mr Lowry turns his attention to baseball, publishing an piece on 2022-03-12 titled “MLB: Good News and Bad News”.
The good news?
So the good news is that we are finally getting a universal DH [designated hitter]. Having pitchers hit has made no sense since the epic discovery of the DH in 1973, and I firmly believe that in their heart of hearts even people who say they hate the DH wish they didn’t have to watch pitchers go through the ridiculous pantomime of attempting to hit. Besides, who believes what baseball needs right now is more automatic strikeouts?
The bad news?
On the other side of the ledger, we are losing the ghost runner and seven-inning double-headers. The ghost runner made extra innings a little more interesting (Wow! A base-runner! How did that happen?) and brought games that surely had already stretched to 10:30 p.m. or 11 p.m. to a swifter conclusion. And the seven-inning games were at least a window into that glorious past when it took less than three-and-a-half hours to play a baseball game.
Imagine how much they could speed up the game by replacing all that pitching, batting, fielding, and running around with coin flip at the start?