As Alex Rivero biked around town raising money for the Newton North High School football team last fall, the 17-year-old started getting pretty good at guessing which houses were worth the door knock. He’d look for lights on and listen for kids’ voices.

When he found a house that looked promising, he would stop.

At one place, Dr. Lee Goldstein opened the door. Goldstein cares a great deal about high school football. It’s what he was thinking about when the doorbell rang.

“I was writing about these postmortem pathology specimens — brains — from teenagers who had played football,” says Goldstein.

Clearly visible in the boys’ brains were tell-tale brown areas, the early signs of the same disease found in the brains of more than 100 former pro football players: CTE, or Chronic Traumatic Encephalopathy.

“This is the beginning of a dementing process that will destroy a brain,” says Goldstein, who leads the molecular research team at Boston University’s CTE Center. “To see this, a neurodegenerative disease, in a teenage brain, that’s tough. That’s really tough.”

Thinking back on that chance encounter, Rivero says, “It could have been any random dad who just came down the stairs and said, ‘Oh football, I used to play football.’ “

“No, it was the one dude who probably knows the most about CTE probably out of 99.9 percent of the world.”

The research Goldstein was working on would, a few months later, be published in the journal Brain and generate widespread media coverage. It involved evidence not only from teenage football players’ brains but also animal models that offered ground-breaking information: CTE can develop even without a concussion.

“We sat down on the porch,” Rivero recalls, “and he starts telling me it’s not just concussions that are the problem.”

“It’s about getting hit in the head,” says Goldstein. “And the more hits he gets, the greater the risk for this disease, even if he never has a concussion. Ever.”

“I didn’t realize how little you needed, how little damage you needed to suffer from CTE,” says Rivero.

Goldstein hoped the conversation would do more than inform Rivero. He wanted to convince him to stop playing football.

“That was my hope,” says Goldstein. “He seems like such a lovely kid and I’m thinking ‘Why? Why do this?’ “

Rivero says he plays football for many of the same reasons that, during the offseason, he engages in his other favorite sport: boxing. It’s the only sport with a higher risk of CTE than football.

“There’s something about it, when you’re boxing, when you’re playing football,” explained Rivero. “It just brings something out of you that you really only know if you play those sports.”

That chance meeting made Rivero think long and hard about the risks those sports carry. And when his English teacher assigned a research project, Rivero decided to write his own paper on CTE. His research included a visit to Goldstein’s lab at Boston University.

“He told me it was the most important thing he was doing that day and he said, ‘I know I might not stop you, but I feel like education’s the most important thing here.’ “

Rivero is still a regular at the boxing gym but says he rarely goes into the ring. He doesn’t want to get hit in the head. So, what about football?

“It’s kind of hard to think about but I’m still going to play,” says Rivero. “This is something I love. I dedicate myself to [this]. This makes me healthier physically, mentally. I’m doing what I love, making friends, there’s a lot of great experiences that I’m having from this.”

It’s hard to compare that tangible experience with the abstract idea of, decades from now, possibly being addled by brain disease. Although, Rivero says he gets it — playing football puts him at risk for developing CTE.

“It’s a thought, it’s definitely a thought. I know it’s entirely possible,” says Rivero, “but right now I’m just trying to enjoy life.”

“He loves the game and I get that. I really do,” says Goldstein, “And then I ask the question, not about his wishes, but about the greater society. Why are we not protecting our kids?”

Dr. Goldstein says the research on CTE is a lot like the early days of lung cancer research. The link to cigarette smoking was not immediately understood — or accepted. And it’s taken generations to change behaviors and policies around smoking. He thinks it might be the same thing with football.

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Strap in, purists. This game is about to get a good deal faster.

At least, that’s what Minor League Baseball officials are hoping. The league announced Wednesday that it plans to institute some pretty big rule changes for the 2018 season — including beginning extra innings with a runner automatically on second base and, in certain situations, shaving five seconds off the pitch timer the league had already instituted in triple- and double-A ball.

Now, when there are no runners on base, pitchers at those levels will get just 15 seconds to begin their pitching motion. When runners are on, pitchers will still enjoy the full 20-second clock first instituted in the minors in 2015.

If the pitcher fails to meet his deadline, a ball will be awarded to the batter’s count, while a strike will be counted against the batter if he’s not ready for the pitch. For a 15-day grace period at the start of the 2018 season, though, violators will just receive warnings as they get used to the new system.

As for the big rule change in extra innings: Beginning in the 10th, when the leadoff hitter takes his place in the batter’s box, the teammate directly ahead of him in the batting order will set up across from him on second base — already halfway to home plate before a pitch has even been thrown.

“We believe these changes to extra innings will enhance the fans’ enjoyment of the game and will become something that the fans will look forward to on nights where the game is tied late in the contest,” Minor League Baseball President Pat O’Conner said in a statement.

He added that officials also have the players’ interests in mind, saying that lengthy extra innings and longer games can pose health risks, both in the near- and long-term. He noted that their partners in Major League Baseball also have a vested interest in keeping their farm team prospects injury-free.

Visits to the pitcher’s mound from coaches and other players will also be capped.

“We feel that limiting mound visits and decreasing the amount of time between pitches with no runners on base will further improve the pace of play,” said O’Conner, “and make it a more enjoyable experience for our fans.”

Major League Baseball, for its part, will only be instituting a cap on mound visits, deferring a decision on pitch clocks this year “in order to provide players with an opportunity to speed up the game without the use of those timers,” MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred said last month.

The rule changes were greeted Wednesday by many long-time fans with, let’s say, a fair bit of skepticism. Die-hard baseball fans rarely respond kindly to the notion of fiddling with their pastime, and a cursory Twitter search — “really horrendous idea,” the “dumbest idea since the glowing puck,” “GROSS!” — reveals a little immediate resistance.

That reference to pucks is telling, though: If the MLB decides to follow the lead of the minor leagues, it won’t be the only major sports league in the U.S. to brave the third rail in recent years with rule changes to speed up play or prevent injuries.

The NHL, for instance, got rid of the two-line pass rule in 2005, opening up the game to rink-spreading plays, and has toyed more than once recently with its own overtime regulations to coax more excitement out of the extra period. And the NFL has been chipping away at high-impact kickoff plays, also with an eye toward reducing player injuries.

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