If you happen to watch any of the US Open Golf tourney on TV you probably saw many commercials pleading for golfers to speed up the game. They realize if you have to wait six hours to play 18 holes your going to lose players. I know at the course I play I have always said that the pros could never be allowed to play because they take to long measuring how high the grass is on the green.
Baseball could take a lesson from golf and start to address the problem of long games. Some of the Giants games have been very long and drawn out because the pitchers refuse to throw the ball over the plate. Instead they throw to first base. Then they step off the mound. Then the batter backs out and takes off his glove and puts it back on a couple of times.. Then the pitching coach comes out to stall so another pitcher can get warmed up. Then he returns to the dugout and the the manager appears and we have a new pitcher Then there a pinch hitter who has to swing a few bats and take his batting glove off an on. Some of the nine inning games recently have approached four hours. If you watch the games from AT&T you have seen the birds swarming the outfield as early as the seventh inning. They are trying to tell the players to speed it up or watch out.
When I grew up a baseball fan before batting gloves were discovered during the hey day of the Pacific Coast League in the 1940's they played 184 games a year and had an eight man pitching staff. I just did a random research of five old box scores from 1948 and the length of games were 2:03, 2:06, 2:21, 2:10 and 2:10 again. I am sure you have heard Krukow comment that if they used the baseball definition of the strike zone almost every pitch would be a strike. Maybe that's not a bad idea!
Homer Sweeney
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