Many in baseball think there is a need for rule changes to help create more action and excitement in baseball. There are many rule experiments going on in the minor leagues and some recent changes in the major leagues as well. Personally, I think most of these are terrible ideas. They are artificial feeling (starting the tenth inning with a running on second base); they require changes to the make-up of the field (moving the mound back), or they introduce new and external elements to baseball (a pitch clock – an abomination). So, I want to offer a rule change that fits with the history of the game as it has evolved.
In 1901, the National League introduce a rule that required the first two foul ball hit by a batter to be counted as strikes. The American League adopted the rule in 1903.
In part this was introduced to prevent batters from endlessly hitting foul balls. It was meant to incentivize putting the ball into play to help create more action and excitement.
My proposal is to further restrict the number of foul balls allowed. I am not sure what the precise number should be, but let’s say, after the first two foul strikes, the batter is allowed four more fouls before the next foul is a third strike and the batter is out. This incentivizes the batter to put the ball in play, creating more action. It shortens the at-bats, creating a quicker game pace. By reducing pitch counts, it allows the starting pitcher to stay in the game longer (reducing the delay from changing pitchers).
This fits with the evolution of the foul strike rule. It doesn’t require any changes other than tracking the extra fouls.
A full count would be 4-3-2 (fouls, balls, strikes). And it really would be a full count. We would have an actual pay-off pitch: the next pitch will either be in play, be a walk, or be an out. This creates more tension and excitement as well: rather than the anticlimactic foul ball on the ‘pay-off’ pitch, we know something is going to happen.
The only downside I can see is that this tilts advantage to the pitcher/defense. The batter cannot simply foul off pitches waiting for ‘his’ pitch. And in line with that, we would lose some of those epic batter-pitcher battles at the plate. But the trade-off seems worth it to me. We get the faster paced game many want without doing anything radical to the sport.
This is a great course. Wonderfully delivered by Bruce Markuson of the Baseball Hall of Fame, the course covers the early years of baseball. From the early beginnings to 1920, the course looks at rules changes, equipment changes, field changes, as well as many of the social and culture changes that impacted baseball. As an overview course, it doesn’t go into as great detail as one might want for some topics, for example, the history of the Negro Leagues. While this is discussed, the history of these leagues is much richer (as admitted by Markuson) than could be covered here. 
Surfing and the Philosophy of Sport uses the insights gained through an analysis of the sport of surfing to explore key questions and discourses within the philosophy of sport. As surfing has been practiced dynamically, since its beginnings as a traditional Polynesian pursuit to its current status as a counter-culture lifestyle and also a highly professionalized and commercialized sport that will be included in the Olympic Games, it presents a unique phenomenon from which to reconsider questions about the nature of sport and its role in a flourishing life and society. Daniel Brennan examines foundational issues about defining sport, sport’s role in conceptualizing the good life, the aesthetic nature of sport, the place of technology in sport, the principles of Olympism and surfing’s embodiment of them, and issues of institutionalized sexism in sport and the effect that might have on athletic performance.
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The Sports Ethicist 