Lincicome: This term is the definition of baseball ridiculousness

“Cockamamie” is not a baseball term, although sabermetrics may yet get around to it. Let’s call it CAM, and make a place for it there beside VORP and WHIP; you know, right there in the beating heart of cockamamieness.

The word itself means ridiculous or silly, and as applied in this column it means ending a baseball game on one knee as ex-Cub Kyle Schwarber did the other night in Atlanta. But more on that anon.

Not to pick on Schwarber or baseball’s misguided custodians. The game is full of CAM, always has been, from spitters to banana bats. But lately things have become too CAM to ignore.

I suggest that the extra-inning runner on second base is a CAM candidate. Cockamamie, indeed. And the pitch clock, the sanest of the latest quirks. Still, CAM. The sliding glove, too, seems more ornamental than useful. Definitely CAM.

Torpedo bats have had a brief CAM life, still around in some places but exposed as just another fad, no more potent than the batter swinging them. A fool and a backup catcher blames his tools.

I once thought the designated hitter was as CAM as baseball could get. But now both leagues use it without apology, dooming the double switch, that delicate managerial strategy, which is also negated by the six-inning starter, who is showered and powdered by the seventh-inning stretch.

I suppose motivational wrist bands and religious tokens can be tolerated but, please, batters come to the plate looking like they are dressed for a medieval joust. Elbow guards and leg protectors, arm sleeves and helmets and gloves and pads, everything but the lance and the horse, never mind having to unharness themselves if they get on base.

Here’s an specially annoying CAM, the city connect uniform. While those of us hereabouts can decipher Wrigleyville and Southside, I don’t know why we should have to. And anyone who can tell me what The Lou is can only do so because of the Cardinal on the shirt. I don’t know that many people from St. Louis but none of them is named Lou. Most are called Waylon.

Among the CAMs still being tossed about is something called the “golden at-bat,” very romantic sounding, certainly more so than “swing-off.” It would allow, once a game, a manager to send his best hitter to the plate, no matter where he is in the lineup.

I may mourn the passing of the bullpen cart and the doubleheader, but that does not mean I have to welcome the automated strike zone. That’s coming for sure. No umpires necessary. A.I. can do it better.

But until then, let’s consider as promised the possibility of games ending with batting practice. That is essentially how the All-Star Game ended. Hey, there are planes to catch.

Rather than play extra innings in the All-Star Game, owners and players agreed to something called a “swing-off.” That is a CAM name if ever I heard one.

Think of shootouts and penalty kicks, strong compelling names. Losing in a shootout implies intensity and fearlessness. But “swing-off?” That’s playground stuff or maybe sweeping up. No pride in being swung off, is there?

Swing-off is the most unappealing device designed to avoid a tie game since the coin flip. Why not rock, paper, scissors? Batting practice home runs have as much to do with real baseball as long toss and groundball warm-ups.

And why avoid ties? Ties must be avoided because, as first pronounced by the old Navy football coach Eddie Erdelatz, a tie is like kissing your sister.

I have always thought that phrase demeaning to sisters and to family affection in general. But sports has taken it so seriously that every game has devised ways to avoid such a thing, causing no end of phony results, not to mention perplexed sisters.

Schwarber did not get a basehit. He is hitless in the box score. He did not get an actual, authentic home run but three grooved pitches from a third base coach. Thus we have the MVP of the game, star of stars.

Cockamamie stops here.