Time Flies, Except for Baseball on TV

 

One of the biggest challenges of watching amateur sports is just that, watching.  Turn away for just a second and you miss it forever.

I learned that early on with Clare hitting.  But there are two upsides to watching games without instant replay.  First, it forces a fan to pay attention.  This has to be good for the brain; seeing the same play repeated seven times is not.  Eventually, a scientist will come up with the supporting data.

Pay attention or not, amateur games fly by.  (Of course, anything NCAA Division I doesn’t qualify as amateur.)  Clare will play two seven-inning games with a twenty-minute break in between, almost always in under three hours.  Ditto the football Bluejays.    

If only it were the same in professional sports.  Instead, the MLB playoffs constitute a form of time torture.  For example, the Tigers needed three hours and twenty-three minutes to beat the A’s 1-0.  Then you have the Cardinals defeating the Pirates 2-1 in a game that had eight hits total, with Pittsburgh hitless through seven innings; still, it took two hours and thirty-six minutes from start to finish.  And Monday night the Red Sox finished off the Rays 3-1, each team getting six hits.  That contest took away three hours and forty-nine minutes I’ll never get back.

Now come with me on a magic carpet ride to my first major-league ballgame on June 15, 1962.  The White Sox defeated the Angels 7-6, both teams combing for twenty-five hits and seven walks.  How long did it go, you ask?  Just two hours and fifty-one minutes.  Played today, we’re talking, what, five or six hours? 

Pick your villains for this state of affairs.  In the Boston-Tampa game, resident genius Joe Maddon used nine (!) pitchers for the Rays.  Trips to the mound are not to be confused with stepping out of the batter’s box after every pitch (Hello, Adam Dunn) or counting to a thousand before throwing a pitch (Hello, Gavin Floyd).  But as much as I’d like to send Maddon, Dunn, Floyd and their ilk to the showers, the real problem is TV.  Who knew the pitching change was intended for more commercials?

Back when I tried rooting for George Halas, NFL games ran in the neighborhood of 2-1/2 hours; now, they’re forty-five minutes to an hour longer.  Football fans will put up with the interruptions (point after touchdown, commercial, kick-off, commercial) because they’re addicted to the violence.  There isn’t the same payoff in baseball outside of the occasional hit-by-pitch.  So, here’s my modest solution to attract viewers: broadcast a World Series game commercial free.

Think of the publicity.  Assuming the umpires managed to keep batters from wandering out of the box, make pitchers pitch and enforce quick pitching changes, the game could probably be played in under 2-1/2 hours.  If the medium is the message, then the pace is the thing.  A commercial-free game would take on an excitement unseen for decades. 

All Commissioner Bud Selig has to do is twist the arms of some advertisers, and how hard can that be for a man who cancelled an entire World Series?