Centennial Conference institutes new rules for baseball
Chuck Probst
Photo credit: Office of Athletic Communications
By Andy Milone, Web Content Editor
The Centennial conference has been recognized as one of the toughest conferences in all of Division III sports, but they want to make the game of baseball even tougher. In order to fulfill this request, they changed up a number of the rules in baseball to challenge the players further.
Some of the biggest changes come in the batter’s box where the players must hit with a significantly smaller bat in order to challenge each player’s ability to see the ball. Another change has been enforcing that each player switch from the right to the left side of the plate and vice versa in between pitches.
The pitcher will then have the advantage during 50 percent of the pitches. The batter will also need to wear an eye patch on their dominant eye.
After the third inning is when the gloves come off, literally, as the players will play with their bare hands. It is during this time that the Canadian national anthem is sung to unify us and our North American counterparts. Each of the players took the time last week to learn French, and they can now utilize their newly learned skill.
There will be no more need for their crazy hand signals because they can now all speak French. The Centennial Conference asked the Gettysburg captains to come up with some new rules. Senior captain Will Anderson requested all catchers have the ability to spray water at opposing players as they walk up to the plate during their walkup song.
Senior captain Connor Tom wanted players to run the opposite way around the bases with third base acting as the new first base and first base acting as third base. There was some dispute though with other senior captain Eric Brown, who wanted to get rid of first and third base completely, so that it became two bases. Brown even suggested getting rid of the baseball during the second inning and having a kick ball be rolled out.
The final senior captain, J.J. Lucido, pushed for more than just bubble gum to be chewed in the outfield. He wanted the ability to eat a hotdog or two…maybe even some ice cream. Lucido wanted there to be Mr. G’s ice cream dropped off to the ballpark every day.
One other interesting idea thrown out by the Centennial Conference was the idea of completely banishing baseball and replacing the sport with whiffle ball in order to test the players’ defense in windy conditions and ability to hit a whiffle ball being thrown to the plate as a screwball.
Changes are coming, and they are being implemented quickly. The Bullets hope that the changes will play in their favor as they travel to Allentown, Pennsylvania to take on the Muhls of Muhlenberg on Saturday at 12:30 PM.
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