Travis Winslow_WR323_ArgumentationAnalysis

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Dec 6, 2023

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Travis Winslow Professor Drummond WR 323 – Advanced Writing & Argumentation October 11, 2023 Module 2 | Argumentation Analysis Essay | Baseball Has Lost Its Poetry Have you been to a Major League Baseball (MLB) game in the last few years? Did you notice a great deal of changes to the rules or to your experience at the ballpark? The recent article, Baseball Has Lost Its Poetry, written by Jesse Nathan for The New York Times on October 5, 2023, explores strong arguments against the multiple changes seen in one of the country’s oldest team sports. The following passage will provide background into these changes and the article that has been reviewed, then carefully analyze these arguments presented by the author in their opinionated column. This will explain the use and effectiveness of the author’s rhetorical strategy in this piece, illustrate how their rhetorical strategy functions in the argument, and then analyze the telltale stylistic choices the author used. To provide clarity, in the recent years of Major League Baseball games, the organization has initiated a multitude of alterations to the rules, primarily relating to the amount of time the game takes to complete. The article mentions, “With nobody on base, pitchers have 15 seconds to wind up and throw. With a runner on, the pitcher has 20 seconds. If pitcher or batter is not ready by the appointed second, the penalty is a ball or strike, depending on which side is getting penalized.” (Nathan, 2023) regarding the changes made in 2022 to the pitch clock added to MLB games. The author also discourses the changes made in 2017 to intentional walks, in which

managers could issue a hand signal to an umpire to initiate an intentional walk, without the need for four balls, and a change in 2020 to extra innings, in which teams would start with an additional runner already on second base. Each of these changes has been made by the organization in the effort of shortening the length of each game. Throughout this argumentation, the author uses the rhetorical move or appeal, pathos. As pathos appeals to the emotion of the audience, Jesse Nathan strongly utilizes this to formulate his arguments on the recent changes in baseball and to persuade the audience to feel similarly. Nathan challenges the changes to the game, such as the implementation of the pitch clock, by using extremely specific word-choice to elicit heavy emotions in the reader. “…the game has become one less place in our subdivided lives in which we get to imagine — to feel, to daydream — something existing outside of time.” (Nathan, 2023). In this quote from the text, the author explains through emotion that how the changes to MLB games have clearly made drastic changes to their experience and enjoyment. The author makes it apparent that they are writing this argumentation to elicit these same feelings in the reader. In addition, the author further emphasizes their usage of the pathos rhetoric as they use vivid and figurative language. When analyzing an argumentative piece such as this, it is imperative to divide the rhetorical situation into its important components. The purpose of this article was for the author to persuade the readers that the multiple changes made to MLB games have been damaging to the overall experience of the spectators, but that they should be driven to feel strong emotions, such as the author, about these changes. The audience of this specific article could be multiple subsets of people, such as readers and subscribers to The New York Times, readers of works by Jesse Nathan, poet and author of the book, Eggtooth, and/or those who enjoy baseball. The exigence in this writing that led the author to compose the article is the multiple changes being

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