The history of people hating (and ultimately loving) major rule changes

Missed calls color baseball history in their own, wayward way.

Don Denkinger calling Jorge Orta safe in the 1985 World Series. Rich Garcia not calling fan interference on Jeffrey Maier in the 1996 ALCS. Jim Joyce imperfectly calling Jason Donald safe in what woulda/shoulda/coulda been the final out of Armando Galarraga’s perfect game in 2010.

With error comes infamy, and you can argue that these moments are more indelible as-is than if the calls had gone the other way.

Still, it’s ultimately preferable to just get it right.

That’s why the ABS Challenge System was introduced for the 2026 MLB season. It marks the first time that players became equipped with the ability to appeal ball/strike calls that, right or wrong, had once been ironclad.

Some consider this increase in technological prevalence and diminishment of traditional “human error” a bridge too far for baseball. Others who wish MLB would go full “Robot Umps” don’t think it goes far enough.

We have thousands of years of human history to teach us that you can’t please everyone.

But with any luck, the ABS Challenge System will be like so many other major rule changes in sports -- criticized and vilified by some, only to be proven a worthwhile and fitting feature of the game with time.

Consider:

Football’s forward pass

Imagine a gridiron game in which teams are basically penalized for passing touchdowns.

That’s the game a subset of college coaches, who were appalled by the steady emergence of the passing game in the early 1920s, wanted to see.

In 1924, Harold M. Gore of Massachusetts Agricultural College decried the forward pass as “evil” and a “menace” to the sport, which he feared was morphing “into outdoor basketball.”

With the support of Wooster College athletic director L.O. Boles and former Rutgers coach Foster Sanford, Gore proposed to the collegiate rules committee that a forward pass for a touchdown score only three points instead of six and suggested the elimination of any run after a pass is received, allowing only the ground actually gained by the catch.

Fortunately, at a time when the nascent NFL mimicked the rules of the college game, this proposal did not -- ahem -- catch on. The opinion voiced by Springfield College backfield coach (and former Major League outfielder) Les Mann prevailed.

“To curtail the use of the forward pass as an offensive weapon would rob the game of its most spectacular play,” said Mann, “[and] cheat the public out of many of the thrills derived from watching a football contest.”

(Then again, Mann had his own extreme ideas, including eliminating the extra-point rule and runs after the recovery of a fumble or interception. Thankfully, those proposals didn’t gain ground, either.)

Basketball’s shot clock

Much like the pitch timer being implemented in MLB, basketball’s shot clock was created to cease the slog and improve the product.

In the NBA, the shot clock dates back to 1954, when it was mostly viewed as a positive but received criticism in some corners. Rochester coach Les Harrison said the 24-second clock took away much of the “finesse” with which his Royals set up their buckets. And Lakers veteran Jim Pollard said the clock “eliminates smartness.”

“Before this rule came in, we’d work hard on defense,” Pollard said. “But when somebody got a hoop, we had a chance to rest a little. We’d take six, eight, 10 seconds to bring the ball up the court, then start setting up a basket. In 24 seconds, there isn’t time to plan. It’s just run, shoot, run. Nobody’s going to play a full game.”

Though the clock outran those complaints and remained a mainstay in the NBA, it took another 41 years for the college game to adopt it. The pushback in 1985 to the NCAA’s embrace of a 45-second clock (since reduced to its current 30 seconds) was especially strong, because it came on the heels of Villanova’s underdog run to a stunning men’s national title with the help of a methodical, clock-eating offense.

Valparaiso coach Tom Smith called the shot clock “the biggest mistake we have ever made,” and Oregon State coach Ralph Miller said it would eliminate upsets.

“You will not see a team like a North Carolina State or a Villanova go through and win a national championship with a clock,” Miller said. “Teams with pure talent, size, this sort of thing, are going to win almost all of the time.”

The clock survived. And so, in fact, did the upsets. (Villanova has even gone on to win two more titles.)

Basketball’s 3-pointer

The NBA’s embrace of the 3-pointer caused even more hoop-la.

The 3-point shot had been used at different levels for decades prior to the NBA adopting it on a trial basis for the 1979-80 season. At the time, the 3-pointer had most recently gained traction in the ABA, an upstart competitor that had merged with the NBA in 1976, but left the 3-pointer behind.

When the NBA’s Board of Governors voted on adding it, the old guard argued against it “with vehemence more befitting a temperance rally,” according to an Associated Press report. When the vote for the 3-pointer passed, 15-7, Golden State Warriors owner Franklin Mieuli resigned from the board in protest.

“Whatever good it’s going to do, the price was too high,” Mieuli told reporters. “We’ve separated ourselves from the main body of basketball.”

(And yes, we recognize the irony of the owner of the Warriors, the team that has since become most synonymous with the 3-pointer, being most adamantly opposed to the rule.)

The legendary Red Auerbach called the adoption of the 3-pointer a “panic” move by the league, and Portland Trail Blazers coach “Dr. Jack” Ramsay called it a “gimmick.”

“Why not give three points to a team that executes the back-door play and gets a layup?” asked Warriors coach Al Attles. “To me, that’s worth more than just pulling up and shooting.”

Layups are, um, still worth just the two points.

When the NCAA added the 3-pointer seven years later, it was mocked anew.

“I think it’s a ridiculous rule,” Georgia coach Hugh Durham said. “It’s like giving a different number of points in football for field goals kicked from different distances or assigning a different run total to a home run hit over the fence 400 feet away than to one hit down the line 330 feet.”

As misguided as the 3-pointer’s detractors might have been, some of its supporters were also incorrect.

“I’m convinced of one thing -- it will not change the game,” then-rules committee chairman Jerry Colangelo said. “The basic structure of the game will not change at all, and that’s the important thing.”

All these years later, the 3-pointer has undoubtedly changed -- and in more recent years, almost taken over -- the game. At the NBA level in recent seasons, 3-point attempts have routinely reached all-time highs.

Not bad for a gimmick.

Baseball’s Expansion Era efforts to increase offense

Much of baseball is considered sacrosanct, and so any effort to alter the rules or dimensions over the years has been met with resistance. But the most radical changes -- and, therefore, the biggest uproar -- took place after run production reached its live-ball-era nadir in the late 1960s and early 70s.

In reaction to the Year of the Pitcher in 1968, MLB officials voted at the Winter Meetings to lower the mound height from 15 inches to 10 while also slightly shrinking the strike zone. The closed-door vote in a San Francisco hotel produced quite an outcry in the building.

“What you fellows are trying to do,” Oakland manager Hank Bauer said, “is make good hitters out of horse-feather hitters, and it won’t work.”

“For years,” added Dodgers manager Walter Alston, “we couldn’t score runs and nobody seemed to care. Now that the other teams can’t score either, they want to change the rules.”

Yankees manager Ralph Houk predicted, “The first sore arm, and you can bet the pitcher will blame it on the mound.”

And Red Sox manager Dick Williams was concerned his pitchers would be “crucified” by the lowered mound, combined with Fenway Park’s short distances down the lines.

Today, of course, the 10-inch mound is the standard at the professional, college and high school levels. And while pitching in Fenway remains difficult, no hurler has yet been martyrized.

The 1969 reduction in mound height, in concert with the strike-zone alteration, contributed to an 11-point jump in leaguewide batting average and a 19% increase in runs scored. But this rise proved short-lived, for, by ‘72, runs per game had again drifted back to Deadball-style levels. That’s when the designated hitter was born in the American League.

Of course, there were many complaints about the DH going into the 1973 season, and some of those complaints -- revolving around the reduction in strategy and the increase in specialization -- persist, even in the aftermath of the NL finally adopting the DH on a permanent basis in 2022.

What’s interesting, though, about looking back at the 1973 complaints, specifically, is how a commonly cited concern was that the DH would keep starting pitchers in the game longer.

“It would tend to leave the great pitchers in the game,” NL president Chub Feeney said in explaining his league’s opposition to the rule, “and it would be harder to score more runs when you never remove the [Bob] Gibsons and [Tom] Seavers and [Juan] Marichals.”

Orioles pitcher Dave McNally concurred.

“I think it will hurt a lot of the relief pitchers,” he said. “If we were behind in the sixth inning, 2-1 or 2-0, we pinch-hit for the pitcher. Now, if he’s pitching decently and it’s a close game, the starter can stay.”

Whatever merit they may have had at the time, these complaints seem trite now that we know that, if anything, MLB has become too reliever-dominant and could stand to benefit from starters going deeper into games.

Baseball’s pitch clock

A clock? In baseball? The sport without a clock? Heresy!

At least, that’s how some viewed the implementation of MLB’s pace-improving efforts in 2023, when the clock was first introduced.

During Spring Training that year, three-time Cy Young-winner Max Scherzer was a noted detractor, claiming the clock would fundamentally alter the “fabric of the game.” Star third baseman Manny Machado was hit with an early infraction for taking too long to get in the box and remarked, “I might be down 0-1 a lot this year. The clock is very fast.” There was a sense among some players and managers that things felt rushed and chaotic, and, when an early Red Sox-Braves Grapefruit League game ended in a 6-6 tie because Braves prospect Cal Conley was called for a pitch clock violation – a strikeout on a full count – with the bases loaded, some people were especially aghast.

“This is mayhem!” NESN broadcaster Mike Monaco said on the call.

Social media was rife with opinions, as tends to be the case. And of course, quite a number of them were negative, as one can see by looking back at the comments when ESPN’s Jeff Passan posted about the incident.

“Destroying the game in real time.”

“Ripping out the soul of something great.”

“This makes me less likely to watch baseball. It is antithetical to the sport.”

All are entitled to their opinions, but, several years out, it would be hard to consider the pitch clock anything other than an unqualified success. The average time of a nine-inning game went from three hours, three minutes in 2022 to two hours, 38 minutes in 2025, with attendance totals at their highest mark since 2017 and many measured gains in viewership and engagement, particularly with younger demographics.

One research study of comments in Reddit’s baseball community noted a “discernible shift in sentiment towards a more favorable view of the rule” as the season evolved and fans experienced the pitch clock first-hand.

“This discourse played a role in normalizing the pitch clock,” the study noted, “as fans began to echo positive sentiments shared by others, reflecting a broader acceptance of the rule change.”

That’s why, with any major change -- be it the ABS Challenge System or whatever might evolve from here -- it’s probably best to let it play out before committing to an opinion, lest somebody dig up your diss 100 years from now and dunk on you.