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Near the end of Wezenball's argument in favor of the intentional walk, he writes this:

It is boring, though, and it does remove some of the excitement of the moment. This is neither an offensive nor defensive argument, though - it's a fan's argument. Which gets me to what I said earlier: I can't shake the feeling that these reasoned, impassioned pleas for the abolishment of the intentional walk aren't anything more than mere "I don't like it, so get rid of it" arguments. When the main pieces of your argument are "this is how I feel" and "this is boring to the fans", I think you're treading on thin ice. Rule changes should be made only to strengthen the play on the field, but only if they do not conflict with the nature of the sport and do not add undue complications to the basic gameplay. To outright disallow a legal play, the evidence of its negative impact on the game must be indisputable. I don't think that's true for the intentional walk.

This strikes me as truly bizarre reasoning: We can't change a legal play because ... it's a legal play?

Look, at one time in the game's history, it was perfectly legal for an infielder, with nobody out and the bases loaded, to let a pop fly drop untouched, then pick up the ball and turn an easy double play. The men who ran the game decided that the game shouldn't be played that way, and they made a new rule to prevent that practice.

At one time in the game's history, it was perfectly legal for a runner on third base -- upon a fly ball to an outfielder -- to take a few steps down the line, away from home plate, in order to get a running start before tagging the base and trying to score. The men who ran the game decided the game wasn't meant to be played that way, and made a new rule to prevent the practice.

This sort of thing has happened dozens of times. Granted, the great majority of these changes were made in the 19th century, when everybody was still figuring out how the game should be played, and could be played. Today, nearly all of those questions have been answered. But not all, and Major League Baseball would serve the sport better by acknowledging that the game as it exists, however wonderful, is not perfect.

Today we have a lot of intentional walks, which seem to be within "the nature of the sport." But it was not always so. When the game's rules were first codified in the 19th century, the pitcher's job was essentially to serve the ball to the batter, and the batter's job was to put the ball in play and then run like hell until somebody put him out. Later, when the pitchers were actually trying to get batters out, for a while it took a lot of balls to walk a batter. Eight or nine of them. Why? Because nobody believed that walks should be an integral part of the nature of the game.

This was recognized for many decades. And particularly when it came to the intentional walk, which was regarded for all the obvious reasons as a pox upon the sport. As late as 1920, major league baseball's Joint Rules Committee made a half-hearted effort to discourage the intentional walk (which worked for a few weeks, before the catchers figured out a workaround).

Why didn't the old-time rulesmakers try harder? Because the "problem" in the 19th century, and in the 1920s and well into the 20th century, never reached the dimensions that it would, in these last 15 to 20 years.

We don't really know how many times Babe Ruth was intentionally walked. Intentional walks weren't counted until the 1950s. Since then, there have been 22 player-seasons that included 30 or more intentional walks, and 17 have come since 1990. From 2002 through 2004, Barry Bonds drew 249 intentional walks. This season, Albert Pujols has drawn 34 intentional walks already this season, and is going to shatter the record for a right-handed hitter.

Maybe that's smart baseball, and maybe it's not. But it's certainly not entertaining baseball. Wezenball dismisses "a fan's argument" as if the fans' opinions are meaningless, or (at best) subservient to some higher calling (the nature of the game?).

Well, I must beg to differ. It seems to me that if you've got something that clearly contradicts the real nature of the game -- pitchers throwing baseballs and hitters trying to hit them -- and the fans actively despise it, then you should seriously consider doing something about it.

Preserving a rule simply because it's a rule does not seem to me a brilliant way to run an enterprise.