IF BASEBALL ERODES TO A CRAZY “GOLDEN AT-BAT,” JUAN SOTO DESERVES $1 BILLION

We know the sport is desperate, but why would commissioner Rob Manfred go public with weirdness that sends a great hitter to home plate — at any point of a game — and messes with history and salaries?

If the context is “golden” — denoting an anniversary of 50 years — it’s possible Rob Manfred has been the baseball commissioner at least that long. His mind must groan in a desperate state when he proposes initiating a “Golden At-Bat,” which would shred every number known to his data-immersed sport and reduce the former national pastime to a Power Slap league. Would he like help from Dana White?

“I don’t give a s— who’s laughing,” the UFC boss said of his rumbling showdowns.

Already, we are chuckling at Manfred, a lame-duck boss who cannot leave his office quickly enough. Is he actually real about allowing a team to use an at-bat — once a game, whether you’re the Dodgers with Shohei Ohtani, Freddie Freeman and Mookie Betts or the White Sox with Zach DeLoach and Dominic Fletcher — to send a specific hitter to home plate for additional swings? This is beyond freakish. He is just coming off a World Series watched by an average of 15.8 million viewers, the highest total in seven years and a 67 percent increase from last year. The best moment was a very serious home run for the ages, from the bat of Freeman, who took his normal spot in the lineup.

It must be an idea straight from the Boras Corporation, headed by agent Scott Boras, who might want a $1 billion contract for Juan Soto if he must bat once more in a clutch situation. Salaries, history, folklore — what happens if owners demand a Golden At-Bat and create a bonkers moment? Does Manfred realize the brainstorm places him in an all-time slot within sporting buffoonery?

Imagine if the NFL’s Roger Goodell gave Josh Allen or Patrick Mahomes an open field without defense. Imagine if the NBA’s Adam Silver gave Stephen Curry a six-point shot. Must we accept a numb-dumb thought as an indicator of how far baseball has slipped in society, a quarter of the way through the 21st century? Wasn’t it enough to launch a pitch clock and extra-inning ghost runners to accompany future robo umpires? At what point do the leaders say baseball must fall into niche territory?

“In the conversation-only stage right now,” Manfred said on a Puck podcast. Yet he also said, “It makes people in the game more comfortable talking about change.”

He told The Athletic of his experience at an owners’ meeting last month, when he heard “a little buzz around it.” Were anguished men such as Jerry Reinsdorf realizing his team is worth only $2 billion — as he speaks to Dave Stewart about buying the White Sox — when NBA franchises are worth two or three times more? Simply look at the franchise values to grasp the defeatist nature. When in doubt, troubled leagues turn to TV partners. Fox Sports always has a concept — boy, $375 million for Tom Brady made sense — and Manfred said of his World Series network, “They’re always thinking. They’re never short of ideas. And they are reasonable.” Um, he’s listening to Eric Shanks and Lachlan Murdoch to figure out the future?

“This can’t be real,” Roger Clemens posted on X.

“How bout a ‘Rusty At-Bat’ for the defense,” Chipper Jones said. “Got to be fair to both sides, people.”

Years ago, David Samson was figuring out a business path with the Miami Marlins. He tossed out the Golden At-Bat feature. The reaction? “The view was, you are basically ruining the sanctity of the game,” he told The Athletic. “The brilliance of the history of the game is that, hey, if the right guy’s up, the right guy’s up — and if not, he’s not. And many times, there are heroes that are made by people who otherwise are not heroes, because they had an opportunity, as a big-league player, to have a big at-bat.”

Crazy how that theory has changed. Two years from the end of a collective bargaining agreement, baseball is looking like a skateboarding championship series. I dare Boras to demand $1 billion for Soto. He just might get it.

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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.