The other night on Stephen Colbert’s Late Show, he got big laughs during his monologue lamenting that baseball was “boring.”
His point, other than to evoke a response from the audience, was that the NFL, NBA and NHL have more sustained action that draws in younger people while baseball’s slow, deliberate pace tends to be embraced by older fans … who inevitably pass away and aren’t being replaced by equal numbers.
The biggest problem, of course, is the bloated length of games, especially in the major leagues.
I’ve loved football and baseball since I was a kid, and the length it took to complete a game in the latter — especially if it was an entertaining one — never particularly bothered me, though four-hour matchups between the Yankees and Red Sox are a bit much.
BUT, A FEW weeks back, a diamond epiphany enveloped me.
It’s been awhile since I attended a game at Buffalo’s Sahlen Field, but a visit to family in North Carolina, found us at a Triple-A game on Easter Sunday.
The Charlotte Knights, a White Sox affiliate, are in the same International League division as the Bisons.
Their home park is 8-year-old Truist Field, a 10,200-seat facility in the heart of downtown not far from the NFL Panthers’ Bank of America Stadium.
That epiphany?
It was the first game I’d seen which utilized a pitch clock and it was hard to miss the digital devices posted for all to see, though some of my relatives wondered about their purpose.
Already a staple in the minors, major league baseball will likely add it as soon as next season to speed up games, which keep getting longer.
The current rule states that the pitcher has 14 seconds to deliver to the plate, 18 seconds with a man on base. The batter must keep at least one foot in the batter’s box and be ready to hit with nine seconds left on the clock. Pitchers are assessed a ball and batters are penalized a strike if they fail to comply.
The clock disappears once the pitcher starts his windup. Thirty seconds are allotted for batters after an out or the hitter in front of them reaches base. Pitchers can reset the clock by stepping off the rubber, but have only two chances per at-bat before they have to deliver to the plate.
In addition, a pitcher can throw to first only twice to hold a given runner in an inning.
AND, YOU know what?
It works.
The day we were there, the Knights beat the Memphis Redbirds, 12-5 … in 2 hours, 29 minutes.
A 17-run game was completed in under two-and-a-half hours. And that wasn’t an aberration.
This season, minor-league games have been shortened by 20 minutes, from 2:59 to 2:39. The length shrunk, throughout the minors, from an average span of 2:45-to-3:15 to 2:15-2:45.
Meanwhile, in 2021, major league games averaged 3 hours, 10 minutes, a record.
Some minor leaguers initially complained the new timing rules took some getting used to, but soon conceded it wasn’t that difficult to get into the routine.
And, for its own future, major league baseball would do well to take a lesson from what the minors have learned about shortening games.
(Chuck Pollock, an Olean Times Herald senior sports columnist, can be reached at cpollock@oleantimesherald.com)
