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Baseball’s Given Up to the Ghosts
Jason Gay
4–5 minutes
An extra-innings gimmick is here to stay for the Major League regular season

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Major League Baseball has decided it can live with ghosts.

Specifically, its “ghost runner,” the runner automatically placed on
second base at the start of each extra-inning frame until the game is
finished. This daffy device was put in place during MLB’s abbreviated
Covid season in 2020, and it has stuck around since in an effort to
generate quick runs, avoid deep extra-inning slogs and burned-out
bullpens, and complete the average baseball game in less time than it
takes to ride a tortoise from Chicago to San Diego.

(To be clear, it’s not literally a “ghost.” The team batting puts one of
its own human players on second base. “Ghost runner” is an old term from
sandlot and Wiffle Ball games in which “ghosts” and “imaginary runners”
are deployed when there aren’t enough actual bodies to occupy and run
the bases. If you imagined Casper settling a Twins contest, I am sorry
to disappoint you.)

It turns out these “ghosts” have worked, cutting down on lengthy
extra-inning battles. Now MLB is making them a permanent feature. Before
you start howling about the desecration of the fading national pastime:
The ghost runners will only be a regular-season thing. They will go into
an ectoplasm-containment storage unit during the playoffs, and
extra-inning games can resume taking as long as medical school.

You should also know that the “ghost” is beloved by players, who, purity
of the game aside, aren’t that jazzed about the prospect of being
trapped on a diamond playing the Mariners until 3 a.m. on a Wednesday.

Baseball players: exhausted at the idea of long baseball games, just
like us!

MLB at least has the right idea, experimenting to accelerate its pace of
play. The same can’t be said of NBA basketball, which is heading in the
opposite direction with video reviews and coaching “challenges”
threatening to turn a joyous and fluid sport into an exasperating
forensic probe.

(Baseball has video review, too, and whenever the practice expands, I
want to ask: How much have our sports-watching lives been enhanced by
replays? Are you the type of person who needs furious accuracy from
sporting entertainment, or are you OK with the occasional human mistake
or miss?)

I do think baseball is on to something with its ghosts. I think it’s
time we start making them socially acceptable in other workplaces. Think
of being able to send a ghost worker in your stead to the 9 a.m. staff
meeting. Think about deploying a ghost for the next office holiday
party. You get to go out to a fun dinner with your family, and the ghost
is trapped in a corner hearing a co-worker babble on about an upcoming
ski trip.

Of course, families would also appreciate the occasional ghost. Who
wouldn’t want a ghost that could take your place at Thanksgiving,
birthdays and destination weddings? What about a ghost that could
respond to all group texts and emails?

I guess we’re close to reaching this point with the advancement of
artificial intelligence, which promises robots to solve all our moral
and social dilemmas in exchange for giving them total control of the planet.

A fair bargain, but I sense a complication. If sophisticated AI is truly
capable of understanding the human condition, and effectively becoming
human, it’s only a matter of time before it comes back from a family
Thanksgiving and says never again.

That’s why I say ghosts, not robots. If ghosts can handle extra innings
of baseball, they can handle anything.

Write to Jason Gay at Jason.Gay@wsj.com

Appeared in the February 18, 2023, print edition as 'Baseball’s Given Up
To the Ghosts'.