LETTERS: CHANGE RULES FOR WALKED BATTERS

To the editor:

"... a killing is judged by the place in which the sword is put in and by the manner in which the man goes into kill rather than by the immediate results. To kill the bull with a single sword thrust is of no merit at all unless the sword is placed high between the bull's shoulders and unless the man passed over and had his body within reach of the horn at the moment he went in."

I am providing this quotation from Ernest Hemingway's famous treatise on bullfighting, "Death in the Afternoon," to make a point about baseball. Those matadors who avoid that brush with death are rightfully scorned and despised by bullfighting's aficionados.

In baseball, the analogue to bullfighting's moment of truth is when the pitcher daringly sends the ball into the batsman's strike zone. The result can either be a strike, a third-strike foul ball, a strikeout, a fielding out or a hit. But if the strike zone is not encroached on in the plate umpire's opinion, then the result is a ball, four of which will allow the batsman to go to first base. Any runners necessarily displaced by this movement also advance, even if the result is a scored run.

I am incensed by the recent intentional walks which were inflicted on Mark McGwire, the St. Louis Cardinals' pre-eminent hitter, by the craven pitching staff of the Chicago Cubs. In my view, those Chicago pitchers are the counterparts of the matador who would, say, use a .357-caliber Magnum on the bull from about three meters' distance. I feel that a rule change is in order. Any one of the following two proposals will do:

Proposal 1: If a batsman is walked on four balls and no strikes, he gets two bases instead of the present single base.

Proposal 2: If a batsman is walked on four balls and no strikes, he gets two bases instead of the present single base, except that the pitcher, however, can restrict the batsman to a single base by performing a demeaning act, such as kissing the batsman's backside or licking the batsman's spikes clean.

One of these rule changes ought to make those poltroons pitch to McGwire.

DONN S. MILLER

Tamms, Ill.