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Fixing Baseball
If you missed Game 1 of the 2017 World Series and happen to picked up a box score here’s the night’s most important number:
Time of Game: 2 hours and 28 minutes. That’s the fastest a World Series game has been played in 25 years.
The Commissioner’s Office has been under the assumption that baseball’s popularity has waned in recent years because the games are just too darned long. In response to that they have instituted a :30 clock for trips to the mound and the no-pitch walk. All meaningless snippets that have had no dramatic effect whatsoever.
Then what happened at Dodger Stadium? It’s not what happened. It’s what didn’t happen. There were no replay challenges. No watching umpires standing around listening to the Muzak version of The Beatles on headsets while Joe Buck prattles on in the booth. Just baseball. Baseball crispy played and adjudicated.
The sad thing is that Rob Manfred probably wasn’t paying attention and baseball won’t learn a thing from the experience.
Published in Sports
I don’t follow baseball much, but I watched the game at a friend’s.
It was a great game AND we ate earlier than we normally do #Gododgers
Go Astros!
103 degrees at night? Wow.
I’ll bet the fans were happy the game went quickly.
It is hotter than hell in SoCal. If one more person texts me #globalwarming or sends me a temperature (it was 103 in my city today) I’ll got batty.
I had to go to the DMV today – a circle of hell in the best of circumstances. 30 minute wait outside; 30 minutes inside with functioning air conditioning but less that functioning employees. And then a bird flew into a transformer (which sounded like a bomb and everyone panicked), power was lost and the entire building evacuated by guards.
I left in despair feeling like I lived in a third world country. Made worse by the fact I have to try again …
Back to the subject at hand. #gododgers. Wrap it up quick. It’s hot and we’re all cranky.
Wow. I am so sorry. I talked to my dad yesterday in Orange, which is near LA, and he said it was blistering hot but that it was supposed to break tomorrow, Wednesday. I shall say a prayer for all you. That’s just awful.
Solid pitching performances helped too. Nice game 1, but go Houston.
But it looks like the Santa Ana winds have cleared the air, so we get to see some great views from the blimp. And I’d be pulling for the National League team even if it were the Cardinals, so go Dodgers.
Baseball does not need a clock. It does not need to “speed up.”
For a game played mostly on weeknights, it most definitely needs to speed up. Who has 3 hours time on a Tuesday? And the traditionalist view doesn’t work either – or were games played in the 80s too fast?
A clock is not the answer. When there’s a man on first and the go-ahead run is at the plate, I want the pitcher to take a full minute to stare down the batter, while trying to pick off the runner. But there’s enough other fat to be trimmed.
But back to the World Series: here’s hoping that Verlander can round out a fine career with another strong post-season performance tonight!
Replay is not the problem with the Time of Game. Most games have at most one, maybe two replays. And baseball was slowing down for years before replay came along. Get the batter to stay in the box, and get the pitcher to throw the ball, and most of the time problem goes away.
Having said that, I can fix replay. As far as I am concerned, the intent is to catch the really egregious mistakes like the blown perfect game call a couple years ago. If an umpire misses a play because the runners foot was an inch off the bag when the ball arrived at the front of the fielders glove, who cares?
So, here’s what you do. Instead of the manager waiting for someone to in the clubhouse to “pre-review” the play before he decides whether or not he wants to challenge a call:
1: The call for replay must come from one of the players involved in the play.
2: The replay call must come within 10 seconds of the end of the play
3: If the player who calls for the challenge is “wrong”, he is removed from the game (if it’s after the 5th inning, he is also ineligible for the next game).
With those three conditions in place, replays will be rare, and only when the player is really, really convinced the umpire blew it.
Call the strike zone as it is in the rule book. That will speed up games.
Number of pitching changes tends to have an outsized effect upon game length, in addition to number of runs scored. Runners didn’t spend too much time on base last night because all of the runs were scored on homers.
But if every game were pitched by Clayton Kershaw or Dallas Keuchel then Baseball would get real boring because almost no runs would ever score.
It wasn’t so much the lack of challenges – though the challenges are awful – so much as a briskly paced game. No pitchers strolling around the mound. No lengthy meetings with the catcher. No hitters readjusting their equipment after every pitch. Hitters came to the plate ready to go. Both pitchers pitched ( in the words of I think Jim Kaat ) “like they were double parked.” What’s the old adage they preach to pitchers? Work quickly. Throw strikes. Change speeds. That was both pitchers last night.
What a great game!
I’m reminded of prior Astro and Dodger greats Nolan Ryan and Sandy Koufax.
two quick stories …
Nolan Ryan. I came into possession of Mets tickets from the Wall St firm I worked for. Every once in a while really good seats would filter down to the groundlings like me and even though I’m not a Met fan I jumped on them. First row. Near home plate. Mets vs Astros. Nolan Ryan on the hill for the ‘Stros.
Bottom of the first. Leadoff man for the Mets comes up. Ryan just overpowered him. Struck him out in three pitches. Three blistering fastballs. You could actually hear them! They made a kind of buzzing or flitting noise … the sound of the stitches on the ball cutting through the air! I never experienced that before ( or since).
Anyway, as the leadoff guy was heading back to the dugout he passed by the next batter coming to the plate. In this situation there is often a brief exchange of words…the next batter looking for a helpful hint from the guy who was just up. He’ll ask “What’s he got tonight?” or “How much movement is there?” Something like that to try to give them a leg up. This time was no exception. The number two batter asked “How’s he look?” The leadoff guy just shook his head and said “This game is over.”
Three pitches in and it was a forgone conclusion. This game is over. And it was.
Sandy Koufax. This story is from long after Koufax had retired. Late 1980’s. Early 1990’s. Koufax around 50 I guess.
He would still show up at Dodger Spring Training to help out…work with the pitchers, whatever. One day he had a group of rookie hitters on one of the back fields tossing them batting practice. Just getting them loose. No big deal. Eventually though one of them asks to see the justly famous Koufax curveball. The pitch known in the day as the Yellow Hammer. Now it becomes a clamor from the rookies … “c’mon Sandy. We’ve grown up hearing about it. Throw the hook.” So Koufax throws a few. Not the good one, mind you. The batting practice version. Still, The rookies are helpless. Flailing.
Meanwhile, some of the regular Big Leagueers – The A Listers – notice what’s going on, stop what their doing, and wander over to watch. They are loudly guffawing at the the hapless kids. Finally somebody – maybe one of the kids, maybe Sandy – issues the challenge to the hecklers…
”You think it’s so funny why don’t you get in there and take a swing or two!”
Now it’s on. It’s no longer Sandy tossing BP to some rooks. He’s nothing if not a competitor. Koufax is on the mound facing major league hitters. He’s pitching. He’s looking for outs. The hitters aren’t ‘taking a few cuts’. They are spit-on-your-hands dug in and swinging with intent. Oh, it’s on. And Koufax is mowing them down. Guys are getting embarrassed. Manager Tommy Lasorda had to run back there and put a stop to it … ostensibly to keep Sandy from hurting himself. But really to keep his hitters from having their confidence broken by a 50 year old who was still unhittable.
As the gods of baseball intended.
At first I thought this must be a typo.
Then I looked it up. I had no idea Ryan played for the Mets…..in the 60s. For me (growing up in the mid 80s) he was always an Astro. Almost impossible to believe he was already going strong almost two decades prior!
Actually both are correct. It was a typo and Ryan came up with the Mets. The game I’m talking about had Ryan pitching for the Astros.
As a young Met, Ryan was right out of Bull Durham. Met catcher, Gerry Grote, would wear two chest protectors and use a catchers mitt the size of a garbage can lid. It was going 101 mph but neither Ryan nor Grote knew where.
Top quality pitching is what makes the game go fast. Only four significant plate appearances last night.
I’d watch an 18 hour hour game of baseball if it meant no Joe Buck.
Great points you made… Go Dodgers!
Yes. Two walks (both by the Astros).
104 Astro pitches, 107 Dodger pitches.
Astro pitchers faced 29 batters in 8 innings. Dodger pitchers faced 30 batters in 9 innings.
And that pitch that Turner hit out was a little more up in the zone than Kuechel would have liked, I think it got away from him. I think he should have given him another very like the previous pitch but maybe to the outer side of the plate.
Laser strike zone.
They tried that in Spring Training one year. It didn’t take long for the catchers to figure out that all they had to do was put the glove over the plate and it would trigger the system.
To me the most amazing thing about Nolan Ryan was that he threw his first no-hitter in 1973 and his seventh and last one in 1991. That is unmatched staying power. I lived in the DFW area when he threw his two no-hitters for the Texas Rangers. The town went insane both times.
His rookie year was with the inconceivable 1969 world champion Amazin’ Mets.
As s kid we used to get WOR-TV from NYC. They carried the Mets so I watched a lot of Met games. I don’t think Grote called signs with Ryan. Ryan threw over a hundred mph, so it was going to be a fastball. And location was wishful thinking. Pure country hardball
I couldn’t believe the Mets got rid of him. Nolan Ryan plus prospects to the Angels for Jim Fregosi. The Mets loved Ryan’s arm but were afraid of the control problems. “How long can we wait for him to come around?” Patience is a virtue.
Nolan Ryan was a crap pitcher. Oh, he threw hard and could be unhittable at times. But he wasn’t a winner, even when he played on one.
For the AL West Champion California Angels he was only 2 games over .500. His 14 losses led the team.
Moving to Houston the following year he was 11-10 for NL West Champs. His best year was 1981 when he went 11-5. But that was a strike year when baseball decided to play a split schedule with 1st and 2nd half champions.
On the other hand, he is presently close to 71 years old and could probably still beat the crap out of Robin Ventura.
I hate it when I highlight the wrong thing…
Yeah, but when he was on, baby…
The number two batter asked “How’s he look?” The leadoff guy just shook his head and said “This game is over.”