A month or so ago I was reading about Peter Morris‘ knowledge of baseball at The Second Pass. I was curious to learn more from (and about) the baseball historian. So I contacted him to see if he was interested in an email interview. Fortunately, he was and we got a chance to discuss his clear love of the game’s rich past and in particular, his latest book (published in April by Ivan R. Dee), Catcher: How the Man Behind the Plate Became an American Folk Hero.

Tim O’Shea: Given how much you know about the history of baseball, what long dormant rules that used to exist do you think could be re-introduced in the modern era to help revitalize the game?

Peter Morris: What today’s baseball fans rarely realize is that baseball was originally a sport with fast-paced, non-stop action. Catchers snapped the ball back to the pitcher and if the batter stepped out of the box or even looked like he wasn’t paying attention, the pitcher would try to sneak a pitch past him. While every sport has timeouts, only baseball has unlimited timeouts and I think some limit should be put on them. There’s no good reason that a batter should be allowed to step out and take as long as he wants after every pitch. Then you could put and enforce similar restrictions on the pitcher, as well as limiting the number of pickoff throws per at bat.

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