When it comes to parental bills of rights, not all legislation is created equal.

The House on Friday narrowly passed House Resolution 5, known as the Parents Bill of Rights Act, which would amend existing federal education laws. A Parental Rights Amendment to the U.S. Constitution also has been proposed.

Multiple pieces of proposed legislation at the state level seek broad protections for parents, using language such as to “direct the upbringing” of their children. A bill in Arkansas, meanwhile, revolves around medical records when a child is removed from parental or guardian custody. And legislation in Connecticut would create a bill of rights for parents of students learning English as a second language.

The proposed laws have fueled questions about the role parents should play in their children’s education. At the same time, they have fanned partisan flames, weaponizing a longstanding concept – parental rights – that academic experts and advocates alike say should not be politically charged.

So what’s driving all of this? Will Estrada, president of the Parental Rights Foundation, says the pandemic accelerated parents’ desire to have more say in children’s schooling, regardless of political inclinations.

“There’s varying degrees of what parents want as a response,” he says. “But I think the fact that you have such a broad range of parental rights legislation really speaks to the fact that the legislators and elected officials are trying to respond to the concerns.”

As of mid-March, proposed parental rights legislation has emerged in at least 32 states, up from 18 states in 2022, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. In some states, lawmakers are considering two or more pieces of such legislation.

Jessica Hill/AP/File

Bilingual teacher Maritza Roman (left) meets with a parent and student during a 2011 parent-teacher conference at Windham Center School in Windham, Connecticut.

What’s in a term?

In Connecticut, the strife over parental rights may land on the steps of a public university. 

Families for Freedom, a grassroots organization that advocates for parental rights, has planned a rally next week at the University of Connecticut School of Law, which is hosting a symposium titled “Are Parental Rights Always in the Best Interest of Children?”

Susan Zabohonski, founder of Families for Freedom, says the group formed during the pandemic, shortly before Connecticut ended religious exemptions for childhood vaccine requirements for schools. Now, it numbers roughly 1,700 followers on Facebook and 200 active members throughout the state, she says.

For Ms. Zabohonski, whose daughter attends a private Christian school, the group’s work is guided by what she sees as a societal “chipping away at the family unit.”

In action, she says, their work involves educating people in towns across Connecticut about the legislative process and parental rights.

“When people feel educated on a subject, I think they feel a little more empowered,” she says.

The nationwide parental rights movement, however, has taken heat for association with hostile interactions at school board meetings, where hot-button issues such as pandemic protocols, critical race theory, sex education, and gender identity have sparked public outcry.

Part of the problem is the discourse surrounding the term “parental rights,” says Natalia Mehlman Petrzela, a historian and author of “Classroom Wars: Language, Sex, and the Making of Modern Political Culture.” 

It’s often used to describe conservative activism around education, which, she says, while accurate in some respects, leads to an “impoverished” understanding of an issue with far greater nuance. Ms. Mehlman Petrzela contends that most parents, regardless of their background, ethnicity, or political leanings, “want to have some insight, if not control, over their kids’ experiences at school.”

She points to a Supreme Court decision this week as an example of a parental rights issue. The justices unanimously sided with a deaf student, Miguel Luna Perez, who had sued a public school district, alleging that he received an inadequate education. Mr. Perez and his parents had argued that aides who were supposed to help him translate lessons were often absent or unqualified.

As Justice Neil Gorsuch noted in the court’s opinion, the ruling “holds consequences not just for Mr. Perez but for a great many children with disabilities and their parents.”

Ms. Mehlman Petrzela says the discourse could benefit from more balance in the form of default assumptions – that teachers have expertise and deserve trust, and that parents care about their children and deserve to know what’s happening in schools.

“If we operate from that set of assumptions, then when difficult situations do come up, there is an opportunity for a much more productive resolution that doesn’t involve, you know, online mobs and angry protests and threats,” she says.

The legislative landscape

It’s too soon to say how the proposals will fare during this lawmaking cycle. At the state level, most remain pending in legislatures, and at least six have failed this year. In prior legislative sessions, the bulk of them failed – with a few notable exceptions, such as in Florida, which in 2021 approved its version of a parental bill of rights. Florida Gov. Ron DeSantis also championed the Parental Rights in Education Act, which critics dubbed the “Don’t Say Gay” law, which his administration is now seeking to expand through 12th grade.

At least 10 states have existing statutes that mention parental rights, six of which are broad provisions, according to the National Conference of State Legislatures. The other states have more specific language geared toward certain student groups or issues.

Jessica Hill/AP/File

Connecticut state Sen. Rob Sampson, a Republican, speaks during a special session at the State Capitol on July 28, 2020, in Hartford, Connecticut.

The murkiness of legislative success, however, didn’t stop Connecticut state Sen. Rob Sampson, a Republican, from giving it a try. His proposed bill – one of several in the state that fall under the umbrella of parental rights – would have protected parents’ ability to withdraw their children from courses, without explanation, unless the class was required for graduation. It noted that parents “should remain the ultimate authority in what their children are being taught in school.”

State Senator Sampson described it as “dead on arrival,” given Democrats’ control of both houses of the legislature and governor’s office. But he wanted his constituents to know where he stood on the issue and see if any Democrats would signal support.

He says parents’ growing distrust with local school boards and insights they gleaned while children learned remotely are spurring the rise of parental rights-themed legislation.

“Now, it’s less about the local school district making decisions to suit the parents,” he says. “It’s about the school district taking direction from people that are involved in political activism.”

But other organizations have come out swinging against what they see as a culture war-influenced movement that could lead to book bans and curriculum changes. Ariel Taylor Smith, senior director of policy and action at the National Parents Union, says the proposed legislation creates “unnecessary tension” and distracts from more important concerns.

Instead, Ms. Smith says legislation should be laser-focused on academic progress, especially after pandemic disruptions left many students behind in reading and math.

“I’m optimistic that parents will be able to come together and build an actual parent bill of rights that’s grounded in ensuring that our schools are advancing kids’ learning,” she says. “I just don’t think that a lot of these attempts are that right now.”

Joann Mickens, executive director of Parents for Public Schools, wholly supports parent engagement, but she is concerned the legislative trend may only “flex voices that are loud and maybe even strident” without regard for what the majority of parents may believe or want. If legislation becomes law, she wonders, will that impose one set of parents’ beliefs on the rest of the students?

“I believe that much of what we’re seeing today is no different than the violence and the opposition to the Civil Rights movement,” she says. “I see that people are afraid. They don’t want the changes to their way of life.”

Mr. Estrada of the Parental Rights Foundation, for his part, asserts that a large share of parental rights bills carry a “broadly bipartisan message” that doesn’t veer into partisan territory, such as critical race theory. While many bills seek some form of curriculum transparency, he says there’s a fine line between providing more information while not unfairly burdening schools.

“We just want some level of transparency of the major things that are being taught in the public schools,” he says.

The Gulf of Mexico is known for its rough waters. Now its choppy, emerald-green expanse is creating political turbulence too, as the Biden administration clears the way for controversial oil and gas activity in places from the Gulf to Alaska.

Recent steps on oil drilling highlight a difficult question: What defines responsible policy at a time of transition – when Americans want to shift toward clean energy but still rely heavily on fossil fuels?

President Joe Biden and his team are moving more aggressively than any past administration toward renewable energy – with his Interior Department, for example, proposing the first-ever Gulf of Mexico lease for offshore wind power. Yet his administration is also approving oil auctions in the Gulf set for next week and for September, and it’s facing a decision on whether to approve major oil-export terminals offshore from Houston that critics describe as “carbon bombs.”

This comes as a U.N.-convened panel of climate scientists has just warned that “there is a rapidly closing window of opportunity to secure a liveable and sustainable future for all.”

Some energy experts say selective fossil fuel developments still make sense – in part for national security reasons – despite the goal of a carbon-free economy. Yet, in an era of what promises to be a managed decline for fossil fuels, big profits are far from assured for the industry. And the Biden administration’s new oil and gas activity sends a somewhat ambivalent message. 

“It’s a signal to the world that, ‘listen, we’ll keep drilling if we have to for our national security interests,’” says Jesse Keenan, a professor at Tulane University researching climate change adaptation. “But on the other hand … as the world weans itself off oil and gas sources, those things become less valuable.”

Gerald Herbert/AP/File

A rig and supply vessel are pictured in the Gulf of Mexico, off the cost of Louisiana, on April 10, 2011. New lease auctions in the Gulf, called for by Congress in the Inflation Reduction Act, are scheduled to occur next week and in September.

Where to strike a balance

Biden administration officials describe their straddling of the line between fossil fuel and renewable infrastructure development as a managed approach to the energy transition.

In announcing the proposed offshore wind auction in the Gulf last month, Interior Secretary Deb Haaland insisted that the energy transition was “happening right here and now,” including recent offshore wind auction sales off California’s Pacific coast and near New York. In the Gulf, the proposed sale includes Louisiana and Texas sites that will power more than 1.3 million homes, the department estimates.

Such investments not only reduce emissions of heat-trapping gases in the atmosphere, but they also reduce U.S. dependence on imported or domestic oil.

Yet backers of fossil fuels say development of oil and gas resources has also aided the cause of American energy independence – and helped the world be less reliant on Russia and the Middle East for energy. The United States is now the leading exporter of liquefied natural gas (LNG). Amid the Ukraine war, some of those exports are helping Europe end its reliance on gas from Russia. 

Late last year, the Federal Energy Regulatory Commission – currently half Biden appointees – gave unanimous final approval of the first large-scale LNG project in more than two years, an export terminal in Lake Charles, Louisiana. 

At least 19 additional LNG facilities are either proposed or underway in the U.S.

Controversy in the Gulf

Supporters of these efforts say natural gas is the cleanest of fossil fuels, and that, as oil drilling goes, production in the Gulf is also comparatively clean.

New deepwater technologies “place this region among the lowest carbon intensity oil-producing regions in the world,” says Justin Williams, a spokesperson for the offshore energy group National Ocean Industries Association. He says the homegrown supply “secures our energy with highly regulated and lower emissions production sources.”

But where he calls the Gulf “a national strategic asset” for energy, others say that fossil fuel production in the Gulf region endangers other vital industries as well, from fishing to tourism and more. 

“This whole thing has the same feel of continuing to treat the Gulf Coast as a sacrifice zone for the oil and gas industry,” says Kristen Schlemmer, a lawyer at the Bayou City Waterkeeper, which works with Houstonians impacted by pollution or flooding.

J. Scott Applewhite/AP/File

Sen. Joe Manchin, a West Virginia Democrat, chairs a hearing of the Senate Energy and Natural Resources Committee in Washington on Oct. 19, 2021. He pushed for the Inflation Reduction Act to include new oil leasing as well as funding for clean energy.

Natural gas may be clean-burning compared to coal or oil, but large quantities of methane – a particularly potent greenhouse gas – are released in its extraction, environmentalists say. And lots of energy gets used to cool the gas into a liquefied state for LNG exports.  

Moreover, oil and gas developments expose ecosystems and communities to potential accidents and pollution. Often it’s African American and low-income communities that live in the closest proximity to the threats posed by refineries and export terminals.

Investing in fossil fuels is not an energy transition, Ms. Schlemmer says. Rather, “that’s walking us back for several more decades.”

Far from building major oil and gas infrastructure, the need in the U.S. and worldwide is to rapidly build renewable energy facilities, judging by the new report from the U.N.’s Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change. 

By some estimates, modest new investments in fossil fuels will still be needed even on a path toward net-zero carbon emissions by 2050. But the U.S. faces the prospect of oil rigs becoming “stranded assets” over time.

“The dominant factor in new investments is the perception of shortened life cycles for hydrocarbon projects going forward,” as Gautam Jain and Luisa Palacios put it in a new analysis published by the Center on Global Energy Policy at Columbia University in New York. 

President Joe Biden’s policies appear partly to be based on navigating this uncertain transition in energy supply and demand. But partly the president is also playing a hand he’s been dealt by politics, Congress, the courts, and prior administrations. 

His landmark Inflation Reduction Act last August won a massive $369 billion for investment in climate change mitigation and adaptation over the next decade. However, passing the bill required a bargain with U.S. Sen. Joe Manchin, a Democrat from the coal state of West Virginia who chairs the Senate’s influential Energy and Natural Resources Committee, requiring the opening of offshore oil lease auctions in the Gulf and Alaska. 

Both lease auction announcements have since drawn lawsuits from environmental groups, who argue the process is failing to account for the threat of oil spills and future greenhouse gas emissions. The Biden administration, continuing its balancing act, cited climate change in recently hiking the royalty rates for the Alaska auction, dousing oil company interest and stirring Senator Manchin’s ire. 

Andrew Harnik/AP

Interior Secretary Deb Haaland gives a speech for World Wildlife Day at the National Geographic Society in Washington, March 3, 2023. She recently announced proposed auctions for offshore wind power in the Gulf of Mexico, saying the energy transition is “happening right here and now.”

Game of chicken?

Then there’s the economic question: How many of those new leases does the industry really want? 

Already, the Biden administration has approved many new drilling permits, angering environmentalists but following the implicit lead of prior administrations that leased specific plots to energy firms.

In the recent high-profile case of the Willow project in Alaska, the administration is allowing ConocoPhillips to build three well pads instead of a proposed five (a decision that faces its own lawsuit from environmentalists). 

But in offering new leases for projects that could ultimately get permits for development years down the road, the Biden administration is playing a game of chicken, according to Dr. Keenan at Tulane. That’s because the renewable energy sector is booming, he explains. 

“The energy transformation in America – and globally – is moving so fast … it essentially undermines the value of those long-term [oil] investments,” Dr. Keenan says. If oil executives were to partially decline the administration’s lease auction offer, “it would be an acknowledgment of the limitations of their own business model.” 

While some of its moves make climate advocates balk, the Biden administration has mostly pursued a bold environmental agenda – as signaled in recent days by declaring new national monuments that will protect lands in Texas and Nevada from development, and placing more Alaskan land and water off limits for drilling.

The Interior Department described the recent Willow decision for oil development as striking “a balance” – a metaphor that might be applied to other Biden steps allowing some fossil fuel development.

But from Ms. Schlemmer’s vantage point in Houston, as companies ready for next week’s oil lease auction, the balance doesn’t feel as well struck as federal officials might claim.

For her and other Gulf communities, she says, “it’s just really disheartening to see.”

As local newspapers grapple with dwindling budgets and overloaded journalists, some newsrooms are experimenting with an idea that skeptics say threatens the very role of reporters: integrating artificial intelligence into the newsroom.

Editors remain cautious about the use of AI in reporting, one major reason being that it cannot distinguish between fact and fiction. But used responsibly, they say, it can provide a cost-effective toolkit to ease the load on local journalists while augmenting their coverage – for instance, with AI-produced summaries of city council meetings.

Silicon Valley AI firm OpenAI helped fuel the interest – and debate – related to AI writing and reporting when it released its conversational chatbot, ChatGPT, in late 2022. The AI-powered program can quickly respond to text commands and then write essays, summarize books, and produce financial reports. Its release garnered national attention – and additional funding from Microsoft.  

In California’s Humboldt County, 300 miles north of Silicon Valley, Hank Sims and his local newsroom, the Lost Coast Outpost, started experimenting with ChatGPT last year. The online-only newsroom used the program to develop its own version, dubbed LoCOBot. The program downloads and summarizes agendas of local public meetings.

Mr. Sims says LoCOBot replaces the human need to scan through scheduled lengthy agendas of city council and other meetings, and frees up reporters to investigate larger stories.

“Our reporters love it because it notifies them automatically when a new agenda is published and it provides a sort of quick, you know, at-a-glance view on our own side of what the council’s going to be talking about,” says Mr. Sims.

LoCOBot is open to the public and easily accessible through Lost Coast Outpost’s website. Beyond summarizing the agenda items in concise, professional language, LoCOBot can elevate dry, bureaucratic prose into humor and verse.

For example, a City Council meeting agenda for the small town of Arcata had its Cinderella moment when LoCOBot transformed it into a bedtime story: “Once upon a time, in the City of Arcata, there lived a Finance Director named Tabatha. She was a hardworking and dedicated employee, who was responsible for overseeing the city’s budget.” 

In all likelihood, the finance director is indeed “hardworking and dedicated.” But of course, LoCOBot never interviewed the director or looked into her work record – making that amusing fairy-tale presentation a bit of a cautionary tale about AI’s shortcomings. Many experts say that real journalists who ask questions and follow leads still have an essential role to play in unbiased reporting of the news and uncovering of the truth.

Conversational chatbots, or large language models like ChatGPT, have no way of distinguishing between true and false, explains Nir Eisikovits, director of the Applied Ethics Center at the University of Massachusetts Boston. He says they cannot be trusted because there are no built-in guardrails. To use AI responsibly in newsrooms, a human reporter is always needed to double-check AI-produced work.

“I think there’s a great irony that journalists – the profession whose reason for existence is uncovering the truth – would rely on a tool that has no capacity to distinguish between truth and falsehood,” says Mr. Eisikovits. “The more important the story and the higher the stakes, the less I would rely on AI.”

Despite such concerns, the Lost Coast Outpost has not had any problems with misinformation or the accuracy of LoCOBot, according to Mr. Sims.

This is mainly because LoCOBot has simple, direct commands to summarize texts, not to generate open-ended responses. He adds that their publication is cautious and intentional with bylines – transparently labeling work performed by the program. 

As part of the ongoing effort to help local newsrooms integrate automation and AI technology, The Associated Press and other news organizations are funding the expansion of AI technology across the country, from Michigan to Puerto Rico.

In Michigan, reporter Dustin Dwyer is responsible for covering nearly the entire west side of the Great Lakes State for Michigan Radio’s WUOM-FM.

When newspapers were thriving, Mr. Dwyer relied on local news as a resource. But as newspapers dwindled, Mr. Dwyer was stretched thin and his coverage became strained, he says.

“For example, in Cedar Springs, Michigan, their little newspaper just closed down,” explains Mr. Dwyer. “There’s no one covering Cedar Springs City Council meetings right now and I can’t get there. So is there another way to get coverage of all these other localities? Is there a way to still give people the tools they need to be informed about the meetings with the realities that we’re facing in local news and in staffing?”

For the last three years, Mr. Dwyer and fellow reporters at Michigan Radio have been using their own program developed in-house, called Minutes, to create transcripts of city council and subcommittee meetings for over 40 cities throughout the state. Minutes has transcribed over 5,000 recordings and made transcripts available to reporters.

Mr. Dwyer says that accuracy with AI remains a huge concern. Transcriptions help reporters search for key words and phrases, but Minutes is far from foolproof, meaning fast talkers and grumbled phrases are susceptible to mistranscription. And yet, Mr. Dwyer sees AI as a viable tool for reporters, not their replacement. “It allows a reporter like me to get a lot more coverage to the audience than I could just doing it by myself.”

With AP’s help, Michigan Radio will expand and improve Minutes’ audio transcription capabilities with OpenAI’s speech-to-text program, Whisper.

Renee Richardson, managing editor at the Brainerd Dispatch in Brainerd, Minnesota, is the latest trailblazer for AI integration in her local newsroom. Their AI experiment will launch in June.

By working with a developer to create an AI program to automate public safety announcements from police blotters, Ms. Richardson hopes to maximize efficiency for her staff’s workflow and give something invaluable back to the Dispatch’s reporters: time.

“We’re constantly asking our staff to do more and provide more information in many more ways. Whether that be social media, video podcasts, audio segments, all of our photography, or all those pieces that go into it. Rarely do we do much that gives them time back. The benefit I see for this is finally giving them that time back.”

And the idea that AI might one day turn reporters into an extinct species?

“When you think, ‘Is this something that would take over what I do for my job?’ the answer for us is that, no, that’s just going to free you up to do even better, more impactful work.”

Staff

1. Birnam Wood, by Eleanor Catton

In New Zealand, guerrilla gardeners cross paths with an American billionaire secretly up to no good. As the characters debate ideals, weigh choices, and battle their own and others’ egos, the tale gathers speed. Expertly crafted by Booker Prize-winning author Eleanor Catton, it’s a heart-pumping thriller that exposes the tragedy of selfishness.

2. Red Queen, by Juan Gómez-Jurado

Jon Gutierrez, a disgraced police officer, and Antonia Scott, a crime-solving genius, ground this international bestseller from Spanish journalist Juan Gómez-Jurado. Kidnappings, chases, traps, and setups (not to mention a creepy murder scene) propel the thriller, while questions of moral culpability and the poisonous effects of unaddressed trauma add heft.

3. The Great Reclamation, by Rachel Heng

Ah Boon, a sensitive boy growing up on Singapore’s coast in the early 1940s, struggles to find his place in a radically shifting world. Japanese occupation, student protests, and “the great reclamation” – a government effort to add new land to the tiny territory – bring turbulence and challenges. Rachel Heng’s moving, mighty novel grapples with the cultural unmooring that accompanies personal and collective change.

4. The Lost English Girl, by Julia Kelly

In 1935 Liverpool, England, a young pregnant bride faces betrayal when her Catholic parents pay her new Jewish musician husband to flee to New York, leaving her to raise their daughter alone. As World War II heats up, children are evacuated to the countryside to avoid Nazi bombings. This emotional novel about forgiveness honors the immense fortitude manifested by families separated during wartime.

5. The Golden Spoon, by Jessa Maxwell

Filming of the popular TV show “Bake Week” has begun at a Vermont estate. The six contestants – including bored billionaire Pradyumna, jumpy ex-journalist Stella, and mild senior Lottie – all have something to hide, especially after a dead body shows up. A satisfying repast for “cozy mystery” fans. 

6. Earth’s the Right Place for Love, by Elizabeth Berg

In 1940s Missouri, timid Arthur Moses gleans sage advice from his confident older brother, Frank. As he waits for love, and deals with a family tragedy, Arthur turns to nature for solace. Gracefully, he grows into the man that readers admired in Elizabeth Berg’s “The Story of Arthur Truluv.” 

7. The Real Work: On the Mystery of Mastery, by Adam Gopnik

Adam Gopnik breaks down the processes involved in achieving mastery by apprenticing himself to virtuosos of drawing, dancing, baking, and other crafts. He beautifully captures the challenges and pleasures of the pursuit of accomplishment, reaching the encouraging conclusion that mastery surrounds us in many different forms.

8. Flight Paths, by Rebecca Heisman

Rebecca Heisman’s delightful debut tells the fascinating story of how scientists eventually unlocked the mysteries of avian migration. Her enthusiastic and accessible account also conveys the urgency of her subject, as climate change contributes to sharp declines in bird populations.

9. Kennan: A Life Between Worlds, by Frank Costigliola

George F. Kennan played a central role in 20th-century American foreign policy and is regarded as the architect of the containment strategy that guided America’s approach to the Soviet Union during the Cold War. But Kennan believed that his ideas had been badly misinterpreted. As the book makes clear, while he was certainly brilliant, he was also a complex and often troubled man.

10. Poverty, by America, by Matthew Desmond

Matthew Desmond’s follow-up to his Pulitzer Prize-winning “Evicted” is a stirring study of why the United States, the world’s richest country, has the most poverty of any advanced democracy. He offers solutions by focusing not only on the poor but also on the wealthy and the middle class, who he says unwittingly benefit from the current system.

AP

Los Angeles Dodgers pitcher Clayton Kershaw returns to the dugout after being pulled from the mound during a March 16 spring training baseball game in Glendale, Ariz.

It turns out that watching people adjust velcro is boring.

That, on the surface at least, is the problem that Major League Baseball is trying to solve. When opening day arrives next week, a slew of new rules will give the national pastime a jolt. The bases will be bigger. Infielders will be confined to their positions. And for the first time, a game that was never bound by time will have a clock.

The changes are meant to quicken a game that has become insufferably slow. Batters won’t readjust their gloves between pitches anymore. Pitchers won’t have time to stroll the mound between throws. But if fans return to the ballpark (total attendance at home games dropped by 15 million between 2007 and 2022), it may be something less material than a pitch clock that draws them back – a restoration of the game’s inner qualities: selflessness toward teammates and heart to make the sport less about analytics.

“When you look at what happened to baseball with ... massive amounts of data, ... a lot of intellect applied to these optimizations, successfully, to sort of get ahead and thrive and succeed, it was at the expense of something beautiful, something organic,” said Theo Epstein, a former executive for the Boston Red Sox and Chicago Cubs who has helped draft the new rules. After a month of spring training, he told The Athletic last week, “the games now look like the games ... when I was a kid.”

The heart of the game was always making it the next 90 feet (the distance between bases). Sure, home runs were crowd-raising. But stolen bases or a solid cut up the middle mattered more. Geometry brought the game into a perfect balance of speed and distance.

But modern sabermetrics undid it. As statistics have become more complex and multidimensional, strategy has become more one-dimensional. The result is less artistry and more predictability, more home runs but fewer base runners. Power matters more than hustle. In January, one baseball historian offered a bleak indictment: “We have to accept that, unless there is a historic re-direction, a radical change in the trend line, over the next generation the ratio will be 3 to 1 or higher in favor of the selfish type of hitter. ... It is not really a ‘team’ game anymore; it is a game of individual actions.”

Yet like opening day, hope springs. The new rules limit how much time pitchers and batters have to set up. Managers can no longer shift defenders based on the hitting stats of individual batters. The results are measurable. The average spring training game was 25 minutes shorter than last year’s average. Base-stealing attempts doubled. There are more base hits, more runners, and more pick-off throws from home plate.

“It made for one of the most fascinating, closely watched spring trainings ever,” baseball writer Jayson Stark observed.

Or, as Texas Rangers second baseman Marcus Semien described a recent game, “it felt like baseball.”