From "The pitch clock is saving baseball — by returning it to the past" by Thomas Boswell (WaPo).
By "returning to the past," he means that in the old days, the games averaged something like 2½ hours, and in recent years, the average had elongated into 3 hours 11 minutes. Under the new rule, which sets a 15-second clock — 7 seconds for the batter to get ready and 8 seconds for the pitcher to start the windup — we seem to be returning to the old game length.
"It’s amazing how hearing the umpire yell 'Strike!' or 'Ball!' as a penalty, just because you have dawdled an instant too long, can speed up a fellow’s metabolism."
Sounds a little nerve-wracking. And too umpire-y. Too officious. Why were we watching? Maybe we loved the languors and the anecdotes.
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59 comments:
Picnics on the mound... look out for the ants.
Commentary is for remote TV watchers. In-person games have scoreboards and you must pay attention. They'll replay anything interesting on video, but the commentary is neither available nor part of the in-person experience.
One can walk around and buy beer or hotdogs in person too. Couch potatoes can adapt.
"Maybe we loved the languors and the anecdotes."
Which we?
Under the new rule, which sets a 15-second clock — 7 seconds for the batter to get ready and 8 seconds for the pitcher to start the windup
This isn't being done to protect the game or please the fans. This is being done to please the TV executives.
I for one would give up a lot for the ability to spend a few more summers listening to Vin Scully between pitches.
No, it's the jumbo-tron and other visual/audio effects that is ruining baseball, and football too. It used to be you could carry on a conversation with the people around you. Trash talk, shoot the breeze, yell and scream, so on. Now your attention is having non-stop demands for attention placed on it. Look at the Jumbo-Tron! It's the Kiss Cam! It's the computer-simulated idiotic game! And so on. Maybe prodding the pace a little will improve the game, instead of dragging it out so the crowd eats and drinks and buys more overpriced junk.
June 14th, 1987 Mets vs. Phillies.
The Spitting incident...
You can probably cut 30 minutes off a game by reducing the pitching changes. Make coaches stick with their starter for at least 7 innings and only allow pitching changes between innings. None of this bringing in a specialty pitcher to face just one batter.
Why couldn't they just tell the players that a longer game means less money for them, due to lower viewership and attendance, then leave it to the players, with perhaps a warning to specific pictures?
Not sure if a pitch clock is a good idea or not. I've tried to watch baseball over the years -- I played little league, though mostly sucked and didn't like it -- but the pitchers who took like a full minute between pitches just irritated the crap outta me. JUST THROW THE DAMN BALL.
Plus it gave the announcers time to yammer incessantly about nothing interesting.
I'm a 3rd generation Yankees fan who watches every game. MLB had become nearly unwatchable due to baseball's evolution into a 3 outcome game: walk, strikeout, or homerun.
I've watched 6 or 7 Spring Training games, and can attest that the pitch clock is a huge improvement. The pace of play is beautiful.
There are other rule changes that should generate lots of stolen bases and more action on the field. The teams that return to real baseball--stolen bases/making contact/advancing runners with outs--will dominate the league.
I usually watch games on mute anyway because I hate Michael Kay, who is the Yankees main announcer. My only worry is that when the Yankees play the Red Sox, the games will somehow still find a way to last 4 hours.
Pastime - (n) Sport; amusement; diversion; that which amuses and serves to make time pass agreeably.
The morons running baseball don’t understand why it is known as “America’s Pastime”. It’s about enjoying the journey, not trying to reach the destination as fast as possible.
Why were we watching?
A dwindling number of us are. I think that's the problem.
In the old days, there weren't so many ads between innings, nor as many pitching changes.
Why were we watching? Maybe we loved the languors and the anecdotes.
Thank you, Ken Burns.
But actually, you're right. A pitch clock could make the pitchers jittery.
Cricket had an easier transition when they decided to limit play to one day.
Joe Posnanski, sportswriter and baseball sentimentalist, swears it feels right; so I'm looking forward to seeing some games with the new rules. Not enough to watch Spring Training on TV, though. I love the limit on throws to first; that almost always seemed like pure dicking around to me.
I have long since lost my fascination with baseball. Way too much sitting and standing around.
Tennis has put its players on the clock, and it has reduced gamesmanship and slightly speeded things up. No more waiting while Novak bounces the ball 10, no, 14, no, 18 times before serving.
Odd how nobody complains that 3 /12 to 4 hr NFL games are too long. Maybe because there are fewer of them.
Look at pitch counts in games 60 or 70 years ago -- not unusual to get through 9 innings on 85 or 90 pitches. I remember Whitey Ford completing a game in 1 hr 25 min. Batters were not *intentionally* fouling off balls back then That, and commercial breaks, are why games became so long.
I'm all for speeding up the game. But 15 total seconds seems a little too strict. With the rule in place in 1988, a gimpy Kirk Gibson either would have been the final out of Game 1 on a called strikeout, or never would have been allowed to bat.
Mixing up experience at the park with experience following remotely. I guess some at the park also watch/listen. I never have. I welcome return to the past. Pitchers will adjust.
I’m looking forward to shorter games - will watch more on TV and attend more games.
Four-hour games filled with lots of nothing going on are not particularly fun to watch, especially when you have to get up and go to work the next day. There are four-hour games that are fun, but they are the exception.
Radio announcers made it work and made it work well when games were shorter. Modern announcers will be able to adapt, just like the players will. Keith is not used to it yet, but he will be. He's a smart guy.
Baseball games being announced by Bob Costas or Joe Buck seem like an eternity, no matter how long the game is.
Commentary is for remote TV watchers. In-person games have scoreboards and you must pay attention.
I have never been to Dodger Stadium without a transistor radio or newer tech so that I could listen to Vin Scully while watching the game. I know of lots of people who did the same.
We saw a pre-season game live on Saturday.
It was weird. It was too fast.
They could have found a happy medium.
I won't even get into banning the shift...
Vandelay Industries!
I have watched a few spring training games and the pace is noticeably quicker, but it doesn’t feel particularly rushed. It seems like the teams have already adjusted. There’s still time for the anecdotes, too.
Last year I saw the Twins play the Red Sox at Target Field and the Red Sox made an art form out out of dawdling. Game lasted well over four hours and there was no reason for it.
Bob Elson Chicago White Sox the best..
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ZW-MUlLkwkc
'I have never been to Dodger Stadium without a transistor radio or newer tech so that I could listen to Vin Scully while watching the game. I know of lots of people who did the same.'
You are a man of taste and refinement.
Although headphones would be better, but not ubiquitous back in the day...
Commentary is for remote TV watchers. In-person games have scoreboards and you must pay attention.
I have never been to Dodger Stadium without a transistor radio or newer tech so that I could listen to Vin Scully while watching the game. I know of lots of people who did the same.
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I was going to post this very thought, I see I don't have to. Miss you, Vin. It's not the same anymore.
I stopped watching games years ago for just this reason. I don't know if 15 seconds is the "right amount" but I will give it a try. It has to be better than it was.
Ernie Harwell would not have enjoyed the sped up game much We'd have missed his tales of people in the game. Frankly, it'll take more than a pitch clock to get me back to watching baseball again. Somewhere along the way when I was tossing things out and lightening my life, baseball must have ended up in one of those boxes, because I don't think about it much anymore and even if I wanted to find it, I think I tossed it out years ago, in another city, in another state.
The game can destroy itself for all I care.
Has the extra innings package for years. Spray Black Lives Matter all over your pitchers mounds and tell me I need to 'be better' because some drugged up felon OD'd on a city street?
Click.
I usually watch sports with the sound off, because almost none of the commentary has to do with what is happening in the game at the moment. Listening to a long-winded analyst recalling some obscure statistic from 2003 does not add to the enjoyment of the event.
Listen to color commentary or have root canal work?
Decisions, decisions...
No, it's the jumbo-tron and other visual/audio effects that is ruining baseball
....and football.
The stadium announcers are gone. The good ones would read scores from around the country, and absolutely own the crowd.
The stadium announcer has been replaced by the talking-head from the evening news on the jumbo-tron. I stopped buying Washington Husky season tickets when that happened.
Lots of comments here regarding announcers. Just a reminder that this blog is Wisconsin based and NOBODY beats Bob Uecker at the radio game. I'm a casual fan, will watch if it's on but all summer I'll listen to the game if I'm in the when they're playing. Baseball on the radio is the best way to experience the game short of good seats for a day game. When I lived in CT, I listened to the Red Sox games because that's what was on local radio. Their announcers were pretty good but I missed Uecker.
Pitching changes take forever. Hockey teams change on the fly, which is why is generally action packed.
Paddy O said...
June 14th, 1987 Mets vs. Phillies.
The Spitting incident...
Hernandez never did confirm or deny whether or not there was a second spitter.
Baseball is so "inside baseball".
only allow pitching changes between innings. None of this bringing in a specialty pitcher to face just one batter.
They already do that. Pitcher has to finish an inning or face 3 batters, whichever comes first.
One season I had the MLB TV package. I *loved* listening to Kruk and Kuip. It made no difference who was playing and what the score is.
Creighton alum and former basketball player Nick Bahe calls Big East basketball games. Great color guy.
Listening to Ernie Harwell and Paul Carey for Detroit on summer nights, fading in and out, was the proper background noise for all sorts of evening activity. I could not have said who they were playing or what the score was though. So the speed of the game didn't matter at all.
NOBODY beats Bob Uecker at the radio game.
Except Vin (RIP).
But, yeah. When watching the Brewers games on TV, I'd select the radio broadcast and sync it up.
And the Sox? Back in the day, Orsillo and Remy (RIP) on NESN were easily the most entertaining duo in the game.
I miss it. But not enough to go back. MLB told me who they were and what they thought of me. Plenty of college ball to fill the need.
Here's a tip. Go watch a college baseball game. The games move quickly and the game isn't junked up like the minor league games with contests and promotions.
The Creighton games are cheap and it is so nice to sit outside on a nice Spring day and relax.
The games are exciting because sometimes the defense isn't so good and neither is the pitching. Things can get wild. No lead is safe.
Wisconsin doesn't have a baseball team, but most Big Ten schools do. And, of course, the best college baseball is in the South and West.
No, Ann. The anecdotes usually make listening, and watching, unbearable. I’d rather turn the sound off if it’s on tv. If it’s on radio, I’d rather listen to the sound of the crowd. The washed up ball players, the color guys with the anecdotes are not what I want to hear.
Bob "He missed the tag" Uecker is still around. Age 89,
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Hs_66S1Oa24
I occasionally try and watch baseball, but never have the patience to wait through the pitcher/batter Kabuki theater. I'll give it another try this season.
Baseball used to be a very pretty game, and I liked it, but MLB made me give it up long ago.
Remember in run up to the financial crisis of 2008 the thinking was that home ownership correlates with lots of other really good things, so we need to get as many people as we can to become homeowners even if they did not have credit, or stable employment, or a down payment. We all found out the hard way that home ownership is not the cause for all of those other things, it is the natural by-product of delayed gratification, and having a stable homelife.
The MLB is trying to do the same thing. The game was great back when the games were only 2.5 hours long, if we can just make the games be shorter we will make baseball great again, instead of making changes that make the game great and having the a game time of 150 minutes as a by product.
These rule changes are so awesome I have even seen commercials for them! They say they will make the game more exciting. You know when Johnny Bench was throwing to second to get Rickey Henderson on an attempted steal the game did not need to be made more exciting.
Only one new rule is a good one, when the batter steps in the box, they get to step out one time, otherwise they are there to hit the ball.
Everything else MLB has done misses the mark.
They say they want more home runs (because excitement!). Do know what gives you more home runs? Pitchers with tired arms. Cut pitching staff in half.
Back when baseball was exciting on it's own many times a single pitcher would pitch an entire game. Some times there would be a "closer". Now they have "openers". Every pticher is on a pitch count.
Pitchers should also have to hit the ball.
The players wear armor at home plate, and look I get it, I do not want to get hit by a 98 mile per hour pitch. But if it is important enough to wear to bat, then you have to wear it when you run the bases. None of this taking it off at first garbage.
The rules changes will be good for the game and the fans. They are knocking out an average of almost half an hour of dead time by picking up the pace of the game. That means the games will be over half an hour earlier on week nights, meaning that families with kids and people worried about catching the last train home from the ballpark won't have to worry so much about getting home at a decent hour. Players will be more attentive and less fatigued as the season goes on. I watched spring training games as well as the World Baseball Classic games, and it was night and day difference as far as the pace of the games.
Nothing beat watching a Celtic game, TV sound off, but radio on with Johnny Most his thing.
Lilly, a dog said...I'm a 3rd generation Yankees fan who watches every game. MLB had become nearly unwatchable due to baseball's evolution into a 3 outcome game: walk, strikeout, or homerun.
Years ago I read a sportswriter suggest improving the game by eliminating the home run. Hitting the ball out of the park should be an out. I can see the logic. Small ball—singles and doubles, smart base running, careful bunting, defensive shifts—is much more exciting than a swing, watch it fly, and a jog around the bases or three 100+ mph fastballs.
Aggie said...It used to be you could carry on a conversation with the people around you. Trash talk, shoot the breeze, yell and scream, so on. Now your attention is having non-stop demands for attention placed on it.
They can’t resist their toys. This is a problem not just with baseball, but with all of sports. The executives are marketing the game to non-fans by deemphasizing the play on the field. Now it’s all flash and graphics. You’re told when and how to cheer. Never again do you need to hold your breath while they bring out the chains to see if it’s a first down. You can’t argue balls and strikes because there’s a nice neat box there to tell you what happened. Promotions are all human interest stories instead of athletic feats.
The game itself has become incidental to the fan experience.
This is a good thing for baseball. We tell kids to hustle. That’s true all the way up until the majors and then we allow everyone to doddle. It won’t take long for baseball to settle into a new, quicker rhythm. And it will allow more fans to enjoy the game.
gspencer: "McNasty and McDirty". Most's names for Laimbeer and Mahorn.
I heard a sports commentator say that they had timed the pitchers and the best ones wouldn't be affected by the clock. they just naturally wasted less time
The master of all things in baseball broadcasting, including between-pitches stories, was Vin Scully, whom I listened to for nearly 60 years. I wonder how he'd have handled this, not whether he could.
The master of all things in baseball broadcasting, including between-pitches stories, was Vin Scully, whom I listened to for nearly 60 years. I wonder how he'd have handled this, not whether he could.
My dad, a die-hard Yankee fan, watched all the games on Channel 11, WPIX. We lived in the mountains of PA and through the advent of Cable in the 1960s, had NYC TV stations.
I can still hear Phil Rizzuto and Bill White telling stories during the games and watching my father nap in his chair between the 3rd and 7th innings. He would have his cup of coffee, a cigerette and the dog sitting next to him. I would be the one trying to talk to him, so he had me do baseball stats - being a girl is no excuse.
Through those stories I learned about baseball, life, and friendship. That kind of banter will be lost if the game is spead up. I may not remember the multitude of games I was force fed, but I remember the stories and the announcers. (and how to do stats)
Side Note: In college I won a $50 prize in a trivia contest because I knew who the baseball announcer was on Meatloaf's "Paradise by the Dashboard Light" It was Phil Rizzuto. I went to school in NW Ohio, so I will assume I was the only Yankee fan in attendence.
The shot clock made college basketball more fun to watch. Will be interesting to see how this new rule works out in major league baseball.
Tina848: Holy Cow--don't forget that the Scooter's banter ended after the 6th inning, as he headed out early for the GW Bridge.
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