BY ERIC ZORN | E-mail | About | RSS

« 'It's a little strange that the people who are loudest about opposing wasteful government spending haven't noticed that long prison terms are wasteful government spending' | Main | Land of Linkin' »

Sunday, October 20, 2013

Speaking of sports -- shall we 'fix' baseball? If so, how?

This thread is to continue the conversation that started in this thread.

Here are two letters that have come in this morning:

 Larry Leafblad, Grayslake --For 6 decades…I’ve wondered why giving an intentional walk couldn’t just be as simple as, “Take your base.” Drone on, MLB.  Get rid of four, time-consuming, meaningless pitches to walk a batter intentionally!

 David Gottleib:  When I go to a game (and it's always a White Sox game, for better or worse), what strikes me isn't only the time taken between pitches or batters, it's the time between half innings. It's the #%$** commercials that make baseball take too long (football is even worse, but that's another story). For some reason, our shortening attention spans haven't led to shorter commercials. Any changes within the game itself should be accompanied by changes in advertising. Hey, if we have shorter attention spans, wouldn't 15-second commercials be more effective than 30-second ones? (Besides, shorter ads would force agencies and their clients to get more creative.) If shorter ads are proven to work, then the airtime would be worth more: networks can charge more per second to advertisers and sponsors, and they wouldn't lose much if any revenue. The shorter ads would boost the momentum of the game itself, and my bet is that if there were less time between innings, the pace of the game itself would speed up. Net effect: Games that are about 30 minutes shorter.



Put a limit, say six seconds, on how long the player gets when he calls time inside the batter's box.

Get rid of the DH!

I'm with Dave G. When I was a kid, "between innings" was Jack Brickhouse doing a quick Hamm's Beer commercial and then it was back to the action. They have got to have added at least 90 additional seconds for commercials between each of the 18 half innings. Make those commercials a scarce and expensive resource to speed up the game! GIven the length of the breaks now, I'm just inclined to check out what's on another channel for a few minutes rather than sittin' and watchin' the fourth rep of the same commercial.

Of course, when you're home, you can start the game recording and then start actually watching it 45 minutes later, so you can zap through the commercials. But at the ballpark (where I've actually been a dozen times this year), the waits are awful. ... and I don't suppose it's going to get better with the new Jumbotrons at Wrigley showing commercials to the captive audience.

By the way, nice to see you at the Old Town School yesterday, if only fleetingly!

ZORN REPLY -- Yes, that was a second-half jam session, right? I was there for the Third Coast International Audio Festival's "Filmless Festival" of radio documentaries. And to buy a new set of classical guitar strings for the family's 4th string guitar.
I like the idea of shortening the between-inning break and perhaps sticking a few extra quick commercial announcements between batters. I'd think advertisers would like,say, 10-second spots that people wouldn't even bother to FF through.

Bring the outfield walls in halfway to the base paths.
Would result in more homeruns (yay!), condense the field of play, and add seating area (closer seating as well). Should make innings generally shorter, and scoring more frequent.

Otherwise, given the price of game tickets, the hassle of getting to the stadium, the price of parking and concessions, why would you want to shorten the game?

Just to make the cost per minute of play observed so much higher?

What they really need to do is add a feature(s) for the actual attendees that isn't available to TV viewers, beyond the heat, hard seats and sunburn that is.

Maybe live, on-site gambling action based on actual game action. Seat back wagering stations, available only at the ballpark?

" take the base"

Has there ever been a game where the intentional walk went wrong?


I've seen it happen a couple of times. First base open with a runner on second (or second and third). The pitcher overthrows the catcher with the first or second pitch, the runner advances leaving second base open. Advantage of the intentional walk is lost.

Dave: I'd be happy if football could just get rid of the sequence of score--commercials--kickoff--more commercials--plays from scrimmage. Why is it necessary to bracket a single kickoff, a play where usually not much happens, with six minutes of commercials?

Decreasing the number of inings would be a simple solution. How about 6 or 7?

Eliminate the pitching to an intentional walk.

Eliminate pitchers hitting and expand the DH to both leagues (sorry DH haters, modern baseball isn't going away).

Enforce the already in the rules regulations on time between pitches and stepping in and out of the batting box.

Remove the fake second wild card team.

There, baseball is improved.

How about at the beginning of every Cubs game, they just declare it a loss. That would save at least 3 hours right there.

I think, for one thing, that all MLB fields should be the same size. In football, the dimensions of the field are the same for all teams. How can anyone take those all-important baseball statistics seriously when a ball hit out of the park in Wrigley Field would be an easy fly to center in some other venue? I know the issue of uniform field size has been discussed and rejected over the years, but it certainly makes sense to me.

Fields all the same size, eh? I guess we'll need giant wind machines to somehow insure that the weather of the day doesn't affect the game as well? Heaven knows we can't have wind-aided homers affecting the results of the game. And as far as it goes, Wrigley actually has longer distances to the corners than most of the modern stadiums so it tends to even out.

OMG I'm getting a headache reading all these goofy suggestions for changing/speeding up the nearly perfect sport of baseball. Move the outfield wall in? Make every ballpark the exact same dimensions? Yikes.

As I've suggested in earlier threads, eliminate the 4 pitches during an intentional walk and enforce the time limit between pitches thrown to a batter. Maybe limit the times a batter can step out of the batter's box -- it does drive me crazy when the gloves are readjusted after every pitch. But don't turn baseball into something else entirely; it's doing fine, thank you. Have you seen the exciting playoff games? Fans are still coming out. If it ain't broke, don't fix it.

In the scheme of things, the intentional walk is hardly the bane of baseball. It certainly is not the reason that baseball can be tedious to watch. Reminds me of people who obsess over small language crimes like saying "At the end of the day."

This is a frequent topic on Joe Posnanski's blog, which I commend to all of you who are regular contributors to this SoS thread:


In a recent post, he agreed with a commenter who made the folloiwng suggestions: (1) don't allow batters to step out; and (2) limit pitching susbstitutions. It's part of a longer thread on unrelated topics, but still worth a look:


For what it's worth, I think MLB ought to consider eliminating the intentional walk altogether, or at the very least, penalize the use of the cowardly strategy by allowing runners on base an extra base to what they would have otherwise been entitled under the old rules. So, if you want to walk David Ortiz with a runner on second, then that runner is awarded third, and the situation changes to first and third. People don't come out to watch the Tony LaRussa's or Jim leyland's of the world overmanage.


Correct, and though it is thought of as a bandbox, it is only an easy homer park when wind is blowing out, which is not the majority of time. When it is blowing in, canny pitchers know it is a pitcher's park and the name of the game is to make players hit the ball. Just ask Greg Maddux.

* Banish intentional walk pitches
* Once in the batter's box, no more leaving
* Delay of game penalty if pitches are not thrown within X seconds of the ball being in the infield (meaning no more 20 second looks by pitchers)
* 3 pitch warm up limit from the mound with relief pitchers being brought in

Baseball will always be the best game. (Go White Sox!) How to improve?

*No stepping out of the batter box once in. I'm very tired of watching players on both teams step out and adjust and re-adjust their batting gloves.

*Prohibit players from wearing their pants all the way down to their shoe tops. The stirrup socks that players get with their uniforms should be visible at all times.


@quotidian -- Who's obsessing? This is merely a suggestion which may move things along, not the "bane of baseball".

There were 1,018 intentional bases on balls given in the 2013 season, an average of 34 per team and .42 per game. That extra 15 or so seconds every other game is hardly going to make a big difference.

On the other hand, the pitcher has to use up 4 pitches from a limited allotment, one of which may go wayward, as mentioned above, and the catcher has to throw the ball back 4 times, one of which also may go wayward.

As to long commercial breaks and batters repeatedly stepping out of the box, they are huge annoyances and should be curtailed, if only for the unintended consequences. I help manage a youth baseball league, and a lot of kids nowadays, in emulation of their heroes, step out between every pitch, take extra practice swings, re-tighten their gloves and it DRIVES ME BANANAS. When you have 6 games scheduled on a field and need to keep things moving, it's a big deal. I've had parents yell at me too many times because their game got cut short and poor Junior didn't get to play all 7 innings, all because he preened for 30 seconds.

The only "fix" baseball needs is to get rid of that 2nd wildcard spot in each league and get rid of that stupid one game play-in they instituted this year... Well, that, and get rid of the oh so annoying DH in the Junior Circuit (which actually does make the game longer- AL games are about five minutes longer than NL since the inception of this silly rule)

And why is it such a travesty that an MLB game averages almost three hours, yet an NFL game is 3 1/2 but there is not the same call to shorten those games? And baseball games are not even that much longer than NBA (~2hrs 20 min) or NHL games (~2hrs 30 mins)... What's the big deal?!? If you don't like baseball then simply don't watch the games!...

Plus, what would Dodger fans do if the games were significantly shortened? By the time the fans arrived in their seats the game would already be over :-)

The comments to this entry are closed.

More about Eric Zorn


•  Transition time
•  Open Thread: The Weeks In Review
•  Fine lines final four
•  Two takes on medical tokes
•  Missed it by that much
•  16 is the new 21
•  Fine lines


• `The Office'
• American Idol
• Anthony Porter Case
• Blago trial
• Books
• Chicken!
• Commenters
• Common Sense Caucus
• Current Affairs
• Film
• Fine Expressions
• Fine Shots
• Food and Drink
• Friday Night Lights
• Grey's Anatomy
• How Long Does it Take?
• Jessica Reynolds
• Mad Men
• Megan Crepeau
• Month in Review
• Obama
• Peterson case
• Predictions
• Prickly Pair Podcasts
• Race to the Slop
• Religion
• Rhubarb Patch
• Rules for commenting
• Somebody Nobody Asked
• Speaking of Sports
• Spit takes
• Sports
• Television
• The Killing
• This I No Longer Believe
• Trayvon Martin case
• Video Commentaries
• Webliographies
• Weeks in Review
• YaGotta

July 2014 posts
Sun Mon Tue Wed Thu Fri Sat
1 2 3 4 5
6 7 8 9 10 11 12
13 14 15 16 17 18 19
20 21 22 23 24 25 26
27 28 29 30 31

Browse archives

Chicago Tribune Media Group