By STEVE KRAUSE
When the situation cries out for an intentional walk this summer during a Major League baseball game, pitchers will no longer be required to throw four obvious balls outside the strike zone.
Instead, the batter will proceed to first base.
If this is supposed to be the “shot heard ‘round the world” in the fight to streamline the game, it’s not quite the same as whatever happened on Lexington Green in 1775 … or even at the Polo Grounds in 1951. Not even close.
First of all, an intentional walk takes maybe 20 seconds. Second, it’s not as if there are a tremendous amount of intentional walks during the course of a game that would cause it to drag because of them.
So this is window dressing — a cynical way to delude the “baseball-games-take-too-long” crowd into thinking MLB is doing something about it.
Are the games too long? Yes. This may not be so evident in the summer, when sitting at Fenway Park on a gorgeous evening for 3 1/2 hours would seem to be such a chore. But it’s exactly that during the postseason, especially toward the end of October, when you’re sitting in a ballpark in Cleveland or Chicago on a bone-chilling night. It is then you start wondering about ways to shorten the game. And the first thing you’d think of would not be to eliminate the four pitches in an intentional walk.
Baseball fans need to understand the game has evolved, which is one reason it’s taken longer to play. Some of that has to do with how the game is played in 2017 and some of it is beyond the players’ control — such as the extra 34 minutes it takes to complete a televised 9-inning game due to the between-innings commercials.
As one who has watched the game evolve into the something resembling Ken Burns’ baseball documentary in terms of the time it takes to play a game, I’d say the biggest reason for this is the constant cat-and-mouse between pitchers and batters. Who steps off. Who steps out. Who holds the ball. Who throws to first base four or five times between pitches.
Next are the incessant pitching changes in the late innings, something I find almost as irritating as foul-fests in the late stages of college basketball games (something the NBA has helped alleviate by awarding two free throws for all over-the-limit fouls instead of one-and-ones).
I call this the “Tony LaRussa-ization” of baseball, because it’s LaRussa who, back in the 80s, decided that he had to resort to situational pitching: lefty vs. lefty, righty vs. righty. The next time you go to a close game, check out how many pitching changes there are in the late innings and keep track of all the time it takes for these guys to come in from the bullpen, warm up, and start pitching.
Third is the modern trend of “working the count.” This has its genus in the fact that pitchers love strikeouts today whereas there was an awful lot more pitching to contact 30 and 40 years ago. The objective is to get the hitter out. Who cares whether he strikes out or hits a ground ball to the shortstop?
But because at-bats involve more pitches now than they did in the 1960s and 70s, and because in so doing they nibble at the plate in an attempt to be too fine, hitters have become more selective, and also more adept at fouling off pitches. All of that takes up time.
My question is how are you going to eliminate any of this? The answer is you’re not. They have become necessary components in the game today because that’s where the game has taken us.
And this includes the two or three minutes between innings for commercials too. When I was growing up, weekend games were televised. Weekday/night games were not — unless, as was the case in 1967, it became necessary to do so.
Once the Red Sox signed a deal with Channel 38, though, that began to change. Now that they’re on cable, they’re all televised. If you think that’s going to change now, you’re delusional.
But if you think it’s any different anywhere else, the average NFL game is neatly squeezed into three-hour blocks during the regular season, but almost always goes over, especially when it’s close. This year’s Super Bowl lasted about 3:45 (granted, that included overtime).
College football games generally last longer. Quick games in all sports these days are the exception and not the rule.