Suggested rule changes—even ones that would materially change the game—are nothing new.
Former manager, scout, baseball pioneer, and the “discoverer of Charlie Comiskey,” Ted Sullivan spent his later years telling stories and talking about the game’s origins and occasionally suggesting radical changes to the rules.
Ted Sullivan
In 1912, he told The Chicago Daily News he had a rule change that “would meet with unanimous approval of the players.”
Sullivan’s plan “would unquestionably ameliorate the severity of baseball in respect to broken bones, wrenched tendons,” and other injuries:
“I would have this amendment put in the rules. I would allow players to overrun second and third bags just as they do first…this skidding into the bags feet first, headfirst or any old way to get there has put more good men out of business than anything else.”
Sullivan said, “As long as a base runner touches either bag that ought to be sufficient.”
He told the paper he had shared the idea with Ned Hanlon:
Ned Hanlon
“(H)e thought pretty well of it, although he was inclined to argue that it might spoil the beauty of the game. He thought base sliding was one of the features of baseball, and if layers were allowed to overrun the bags this feature would go and baseball would suffer, but I don’t agree.”
Sullivan found little agreement and his idea gained no momentum.
Baseball History Daily 
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