David Shapiro: Shohei Ohtani, Fernando Tatis and Vladimir Guerrero are saving baseball from itself

It’s the Fourth of July, and I’m diverting from my usual local news focus to indulge my favorite patriotic topic: baseball.

Ironically, what impresses me lately about this American pastime is how it’s being saved from computer-driven tedium by exciting and personable young international stars like Shohei Ohtani from Japan, Fernando Tatis Jr. from the Dominican Republic, Vladimir Guerrero Jr. from Canada, Ronald Acuna Jr. from Venezuela, Xander Bogaerts from Aruba and Yordan Alvarez from Cuba.

I’ve watched less baseball over the years as routine games that used to take a couple of hours now often stretch twice as long as batters adjust their gloves and shin guards while pitchers walk around the mound contemplating their spin rates and managers make endless changes guided by odds figured by front-office wonks.

Action wanes as batters facing computer-generated shifts and illegal pitching substances that make baseballs defy gravity strike out in record numbers.

In a word: boring.

But the young stars are drawing me back with outsize talent and often boisterous personalities that challenge baseball’s unwritten rules of dull modesty.

Ohtani dares to think he can be a regular as both a hitter and pitcher, the first to do so since Babe Ruth, who managed it only two years in 1918-1919.

The Angels phenom is leading the majors in home runs of Ruthian majesty, while pitching 100 mph fastballs and scorching basepaths with his speed; at one point this season, he had both the hardest- batted ball and hardest-thrown pitch recorded by Statcast, and one of the fastest speeds from home to first.

If he can sustain it, Ohtani could be to baseball what Tiger Woods was to golf, with the same potential to rocket the game’s popularity.

Tatis wields prodigious power for a shortstop while exciting Padres fans with baserunning bravado such as tagging up to score on an infield pop-up.

Guerrero, born in Montreal while his Dominican dad played for the Expos, evokes his Hall of Fame father as he matches Ohtani homer for homer and hits for average, too, while leading his Blue Jays’ playoff hopes.

Acuna had 41 home runs and 37 stolen bases — Willie Mays-like numbers — in only his second year with the Braves.

Today’s young stars play with infectious chest-thumping and heaven- pointing enthusiasm, and their dugouts overflow with in-your-face celebrations of success that you love if they’re your team and hate if they’re not.

There’s been blowback from adherents of the unwritten rules; 76-year-old White Sox manager Tony La Russa excoriated Yermin Mercedes for not playing “the right way” when he hit a home run on a 3-0 count in a game the Sox had well in hand, and didn’t object when the other pitcher threw at Mercedes the next day.

Baseball has a dim future if it clings to this thinking and doesn’t let players display the personality and excitement that has zoomed NBA basketball past baseball in popularity.

Reach David Shapiro at volcanicash@gmail.com.