Quick – Who was the last Dodger player to actually take “four wide ones” – i.e., to actually receive four-pitches in an intentional walk – during a regular season Dodger game?

How about during a Dodgers postseason game?

Why are these seemingly insignificant questions even important? Because whoever they were, they are now the last Dodger players who were actually pitched to during an intentional walk in Dodgers history … ever.

Last Tuesday it was announced that MLB commissioner Rob Manfred had ordered a change to the game of baseball; a game that has been around for 148 years and was around 90 years before Manfred was even born. In an effort to speed up the now-proverbial ‘pace of play’ in a game that has never had a play clock, Manfred decided that MLB pitchers would no longer be required to actually make four pitches that were well out of the strike zone – hopefully well enough to not be hit but not so well as to end up at the backstop as the result of a wild pitch.

Intentional walks have always played a huge role in baseball strategy, but is making the one or two of them per game (if that) automatic really going to make that big of a difference in the overall pace of play?
(Photo credit – Harry How)

Instead, Manfred decided that intentional walks will now be automatically granted when a manager gives the home plate umpire a signal that he wants to intentionally walk the batter stepping up to the plate – presumably by holding up four fingers. And while there are many who are applauding Manfred for doing away with what they consider a complete waste of time (in a game that has never had a play clock), there are many old-school baseball purists who are upset with the further wussification of our national pastime.

Notice anything significant about these two tweets?

I make no bones about it, I am among those old-school baseball purists and I am 100 percent on Gail Johnson’s team – not necessarily because I am opposed to change, but because I am… well… an old-school baseball purists and like the game just the way it is – the designated hitter rule notwithstanding. I am also opposed to this new IBB rule because the man who was my childhood hero and is still my all-time favorite Dodger is rolling over in his grave over this completely unnecessary rule change.

“Once, the manager came out to the mound and instructed me to walk a batter,” Dodgers Hall of Fame right-hander Don Drysdale once said. “I wound up hitting him instead. Why waste four pitches when one will do?”

I know what you’re thinking. You’re thinking that even the great Don Drysdale preferred not making four pitches during an intentional walk, right?

Wrong.

For those of us who were blessed to have personally watched ‘Big D’ pitch, we knew that he would never – not ever – give in to a hitter, not even when he was ordered by Hall of Fame manager Walter Alston to issue an intentional base on balls. It was Drysdale’s philosophy that if you were going to be awarded first base, you were damn well going to earn your way there – bruised or otherwise.

It’s not that Drysdale would always intentionally hit batters that Alston ordered him to intentionally walk. In fact, over his 14-year Hall of Fame career, the Van Nuys, California native issued 123 intentional walks. However, he also hit a total of 154 batters during his career, thus proving that intimidation was a huge part of his game.

“I hate all hitters. I start a game mad and I stay that way until it’s over.” – Don Drysdale (AP photo)

And, of course, with the death of the four-pitch intentional walk, we will never again see these happen:

But alas, Rob Manfred wins and baseball purists lose, just as they did with the designated hitter rule and – until recently – awarding World Series home field advantage to the winner of the All-Star game which, of course, gives us old-schoolers at least a glimmer of hope – albeit slight – that perhaps one day Manfred (or one of his successors) may repeal this potential game-changing rule. And while we all get that change is inevitable in nearly every walk of life, change merely for the sake of change rarely ends well.

Oh … the answer to those two now Dodger trivia questions:

• Joc Pederson, on Saturday, September 24, 2016 in a 14-1 rout of the Colorado Rockies off of Chad Bettis at Dodger Stadium,
• Howie Kendrick, on Thursday, October 13, 2016 in Game-5 of the 2016 National League Division Series in the series-deciding 4-3 win over the Washington Nationals off of (wait for it…) Mark Melancon at Nationals Park.