Dear Mr. Commissioner—Don't Break Baseball

Thirty millionaires convened last week, in the legendary metropolis of Baltimore, to choose their newest champion. After two decades under the reign of car salesman Bud Selig—he who allowed the strike, who brought us interleague, who was undone by the All-Star Game, and vanquished Alex Rodriguez—Major League Baseball will now be commissioned by Rob Manfred, a company man who has long served at Selig's right hand.

That Manfred is for now a cipher has made it easy for some to imagine him a radical. Advice for the incoming commissioner went around the Internet last week, with Ted Berg suggesting we put Bartolo Colón on the MLB logo, and Keith Olbermann imagining himself in charge, striking down the designated hitter and installing Gil Hodges and Buck O'Neill in the Hall of Fame. Noble suggestions all.

I myself have engaged in this kind of fantasy, staying up nights imagining a white knight into the kingdom of baseball and forcing certain struggling ownership groups to sell their teams. This is a silly dream. The commissioner's office is a conservative one, and nothing it adds to the game will be positive. Baseball is slowly becoming as loud and undignified as a 99¢ iPhone game, and the best we can hope for Manfred is that he will hold the line. And so, in the spirit of The 10 Do's and 500 Dont's of Knife Safety,here are five bad ideas we hope the new commish will have the spine to stay away from.

DON'T GIVE IN TO THE DESIGNATED HITTER

Do you know who brought the designated hitter to the American League? Charles O. Finley, the egomaniac owner of the 1970s Oakland Athletics, whose other innovations included orange baseballs, a mechanical baseball-delivering rabbit, and treating his players so poorly that their hatred of him served as inspiration for three straight World Series titles. Finley was an insurance salesman who put his smiling face on every ticket, and believed baseball was a product that should be tinkered with if it wasn't selling hot enough. He was wrong.

The DH is an abomination not because it corrupted the game—baseball, gleefully, has been corrupt since its inception—but because most designated hitters are boring to watch: high strikeout ogres who can't run, field, or hit for average. There is enough about this sport that's boring. There's no need to add anything more. I've never spoken to anyone, nor read anything, which suggests bringing the designated hitter to the National League is a good idea. Yet it is widely regarded as an inevitability. "Nobody wants to do this, but we're going to do it anyway, so we might as well do it," is the kind of thinking that led to escalation in Vietnam. You just started this job, Manfred. Don't turn into LBJ.

DON'T FLIRT WITH MLB: EUROPE

As a parting gift to the sport, Selig has mulled the possibility of playing regular season games in London or the Netherlands. Like televisions in elevators, this is an innovation nobody asked for. Although last season's jaunt to Australia was tolerated by all but Zack Greinke, disrupting the start of two teams' seasons was not worth whatever boon it might have given to baseball in the southern hemisphere. As the only American fan of the World Baseball Classic, I understand that there are incipient European baseball leagues that should be encouraged, but the only sensible time for such a trip would be in late March—when the soccer season is starting to climax. An occasional trip abroad is an amusing novelty, but an annual one is a National Football League kind of thing, and baseball should be kept as separate from the NFL as possible.

DON'T MANGLE THE RULEBOOK

In a dark horse contender for dumbest baseball article of the season, Tom Verducci spent 2,000 words arguing that baseball will not survive 2014 unless a change is made to the rulebook to outlaw that black magic known as the defensive shift. (Not one of those 2,000 words, amazingly, was "bunt.") Never mind that shifts have been a part of baseball since the 19th Century, or that the rulebook doesn't govern where fielders have to stand—defensive shifts should be celebrated as a natural evolution in the sport's strategy. The game will correct for them in time, as all well-balanced sports do. Meddling in evolution is a violation of the Prime Directive—and although I can find no evidence the new commissioner is a Trekkie, I'm sure he knows better.

DON'T SUCCUMB TO THE NOVEMBER CLASSIC

The current scheduling for baseball's playoffs demonstrates that the men in charge are blind to two things: the dangers of watering down a product, and the weather. Twice in the last five years, the World Series has finished in November. As you probably know, it gets cold in November, and anyone who has ever watched April baseball in Target Field understands that cold-weather baseball is a rotten game. Expanding the wild card playoffs is, like the global conquest of the designated hitter, seen as an inevitability. Here is another fine example of baseball's greatest minds at work. "Sure, everyone hates cold weather baseball, but we can squeeze just a few more games in before anyone notices, right?" It would take a baseball miracle, but I pray that the 2015 World Series comes down to the Twins and Rockies, and every game gets snowed out. If the overlords of baseball keep challenging Old Man Winter, he will eventually fight back.

DON'T ALLOW ANOTHER STRIKE

But then, Robbie, you knew that one already, didn't you?

Baseball is a resilient game. It has survived every idiocy heaped on it—astroturf, domed stadiums, the Arizona Diamondbacks—and it will withstand a lot more. But that's no reason to test it.

Follow W.M. Akers on Twitter.