Major League Baseball announced Tuesday that any pitch transcending the physical plane to enter a state of pure, non-dual awareness will now be penalized as an automatic ball under the league's pace-of-play initiatives.
Commissioner Rob Manfred issued the memo to all 30 clubs following a recent string of late-inning incidents in which high-velocity sinkers and four-seamers briefly phased out of linear time. The new rule empowers home plate umpires to immediately award a ball to the batter if a pitch achieves ego-death before crossing the plate, effectively ending the previous practice of pausing the pitch clock while catchers waited for the baseball to return from the astral realm.
The league's competition committee unanimously approved the change after a Friday night matchup between the Los Angeles Dodgers and the San Diego Padres. Play was halted for nine minutes in the eighth inning when a 103-mph fastball thrown by Michael Kopech achieved total enlightenment, forcing the umpiring crew to consult replay officials in New York to determine if a ball that had become one with the infinite fabric of the universe could be called a strike on the outside corner.
While we respect the biomechanical achievement required to throw a slider so hard it perceives the true nature of reality, having our broadcast partners wait around while the baseball communes with the cosmic architect is simply bad for television.
The Major League Baseball Players Association immediately filed a grievance, arguing that the penalty unfairly targets high-leverage relievers who rely on interdimensional movement to generate weak contact. Several veteran pitching coaches noted that forcing pitchers to keep their sweepers strictly tethered to the three-dimensional world will artificially inflate batting averages, particularly against left-handed hitters who already struggle to pick up the ball's existential release point.
In a clarifying addendum distributed to front offices, the league office confirmed that if a batter successfully swings at and makes contact with a pitch currently experiencing the infinite oneness of creation, the resulting play will be ruled a standard foul strike and the ball will be removed from play.