Once upon a time in my lifetime, teams used four-man starting rotations. That practice allowed the Baltimore Orioles of 1971 to have four 20-game winners: Dave McNally, Mike Cuellar, Pat Dobson, Jim Palmer. In five-man rotations, which the New York Mets initiated in the late 1960s, pitchers don’t get enough starts to win 20.

That change was only the start of the era of pampering pitchers. Pitch counts followed. Someone decided that 100 pitches served as a magical limit to avoid injuries. Of course, the fact that pitchers continued to develop sore arms was ignored. Arms didn’t become weaker. Brains did.

The fact that pitchers, for decades, worked 300 innings in a season without incurring injuries and without shortening their careers eluded managers and coaches. No one was willing to take a chance on reverting to previous practices and incurring blame for any pitcher’s injury.

Bullpens have been expanded. Starters, if they are effective, last only five innings, and four relievers pitch an inning each. Tampa Bay created the “opener,” a pitcher who starts a game but pitches only an inning or two, followed by a series of relievers.

Pitching, however, isn’t the only area that has seen changes. Shifts have consumed the game. Infielders are stacked on one side of the field or the other. One player often plays in short right field or left field, looking like the short fielder in a softball game.

For the most part, today’s game is dictated by analytics. Every team has a staff of analytics experts, many of whom graduated from Ivy League schools, which in previous eras had no connection to Major League Baseball.

Besides all of these changes, though, there is one that surfaced just the other day and might be the most controversial of all of the changes.

Entering the ninth inning of the first game of the National League Championship Series last week, the Washington Nationals had a 2-0 lead over the St. Louis Cardinals but they didn’t have their current closer to pitch the ninth.

Daniel Hudson had replaced Sean Doolittle as the Nationals’ closer, but he was not with the team that evening. Instead, he was in Arizona with his wife, Sara, and their third daughter, Millie, who was born earlier that day. Hudson was on baseball’s one-day parent leave.

Had the Nationals not reached the championship series of the playoffs, Hudson’s presence would not have been an issue. He would have been just another anonymous figure in the Nats’ bullpen. The playoff development changed that.

Paternity leave came into baseball officially in 2011, and Texas pitcher Colby Lewis was reportedly the first player to take advantage of it. It didn’t catch on immediately. Three years later Daniel Murphy of the Mets missed the first two games of the season and incurred severe media criticism.

Since then it seems to have been accepted and isn’t even talked about unless there is a Hudson-type development. Players have accepted the idea, but that is expected because players are the ones whose wives are having babies.

Should a player, such as Hudson, miss an important game, a post-season game, for example? That is a question that could be debated with no end and no conclusion. I tend to lean toward not missing games, but younger members of my family disagree, leading me to believe that it is a generational issue.

Those of us who had children who have now had children of their own were not given the opportunity to have paternity leave. Did the babies suffer by not having their fathers at their birth? Of course not. Did we fathers miss anything important by not being present? Perhaps the curiosity of childbirth, but I would say no.

Would Daniel Hudson’s life be any different had he worn spikes and pitched against the Cardinals rather than putting on a hospital gown and being in the delivery room?

I found two tweets on the subject, and I think they represent their respective views.

David Samson, former president of the Miami Marlins: “Unreal that Daniel Hudson is on paternity list and missing game 1 of #NLCS. Only excuse would be a problem with the birth or health of baby or mother. If all is well, he needs to get to St. Louis. Inexcusable. Will it matter?”

Michael Young, former major league infielder: “I promise you every one of his teammates will embrace/congratulate him and not give two effs that he missed a game for that reason. That kid will always know what Dad sacrificed to welcome her into this world. Congrats, Daniel Hudson.”

Hudson is not the first player to miss a game for reasons other than injury. Sandy Koufax and Hank Greenberg, among others, missed important games for religious reasons and are still lively topics of conversation.

It’s easy to say that being a part of your child’s birth is more important than anything. Many would say the family is more important than anything and it’s hard to argue that. But a team is a family, too. The players can be together for nine months, and they can live more intimately than families. Players probably spend more time together in clubhouses than players and wives spend together in their homes.

Players make commitments to each other. They share a common goal. They rely on each other for all of those months.

From a different perspective, the “importance“ of a father attending the birth of his child is, I believe, a relatively new concept. When my children were born in the 1960s and 1970, I certainly was not invited into the delivery room. I am not sure when that practice became the norm, but I would guess it has been less than 40 years. And as criticized as I may be for making this statement or taking this position, a father is going to love his child regardless of whether or not he was in the delivery room, and a child is not going to love his father any less if he finds out the father was not in the delivery room.

In fact, I would like to think that child would one day be proud that his father understood the concept and importance of commitment, and that attendance at the birth is not a prerequisite for love.

If we consider the importance of being in the delivery room, what about the hundreds of thousands, if not millions, of fathers in the military who have missed the births of their children? Should the United States Military send all expecting fathers home from active duty, whether they be in training stateside or deployed in active combat around the world?

Now clearly, equating fathers in active combat with major league baseball players is a silly comparison. But where should the line be drawn?

Back to a baseball team. Should we feel the same about a pitcher skipping a playoff game versus a regular season game in June? Or do we care about this specific case because the Nationals pitcher is the team’s set-up man/closer and thus is an integral part of the Nationals? But what if he were a middle reliever? What if he were the 25^th man on the roster unlikely to see any playing time?

Exploring further, those who think Hudson should have played would likely say that a manager who is an expecting father should stay and manage the game. The same person would likely think the team’s pitching coach should also stay and coach the playoff game. But what about the bullpen coach or the first base coach? Those positions are still parts of a playoff team but are certainly less integral than other positions. So where do we draw the line when deciding commitment to team is more important than being present at the birth of a child? The answer can only be found in the mind of a critic.