The game of baseball is beautiful, classic, traditional and…stuck in the past.

We’ve romanticized the game's past so much that we’ve forgotten about its future. Since its beginnings, baseball has been guided by an invisible hand. A set of unwritten rules that all players are expected to adhere to. These unwritten rules are responsible for trying to kill our fans’ favorable perception of the game that we love. They strangle the passion and creativity of some of our sports most exciting athletes, all for the fear of breaking those unwritten rules. We are so enamored by the idea of what we think the game should look like that we fail to see how it could be seen. The past has been glorified so much that we resist any change at all for fear that it will degrade traditions but in doing so we have stopped the game from progressing forward. We are surprised and offended when we hear someone say the game is boring or dying, but we don’t take action to fix it.

I was happy to see Commissioner Manfred’s recent comments regarding players expressing themselves being good for the game. He understands the game needs to get younger and more exciting and he knows he’ll be able to rely on the “great generation of young stars coming into the game.” There is an exciting group of young players coming up in the league who have the opportunity and obligation to breathe new life into baseball. We have an obligation to not only represent ourselves, but all of those who have sacrificed so much to help us get to this point. We have an obligation to respect the game and all of the greats who came before us who refused to play anyone else’s game. We have the opportunity to drive this game forward and inspire future generations to know that they can do the same. We are a generation of ballplayers who express ourselves through a level of energy, passion, and style that we bring every time we step on the field.