Pardon the personal note, but after two decades of trying to understand what is and has been going on with major league baseball, I finally reached a conclusion.

This epiphany struck on Tuesday when Jeff McNeil of the Mets hit a single that brought in the automatic runner—a runner who replaced the initial automatic runner placed on second base—securing a win for the Mets. This victory was another product of the Rob Manfred Era’s innovations, designed to artificially boost excitement without much grounding in reality.

As Gary Cohen, announcing the game on SNY, reacted as if shocked by a bolt of electricity, the Mets dashed out of the dugout to celebrate McNeil’s play as if they had just claimed the World Series, triumphed in the Peloponnesian War, and won the Yankee Stadium 50-50 raffle all at once.

Such excess has become so obligatory, forced, fleeting and insincere — just a cheap imitation of previous cheap imitations — that generations of high-achievement professional ballplayers and triple-IQ fans would view as preposterous.