Some Thoughts on Saving Baseball from Itself

Professional baseball games take too long to complete, especially between the Yankees and the Red Sox. If the first inning takes over 40 minutes to finish something is wrong. If the entire nine innings takes more than four hours something is seriously wrong.

Here are some helpful hints to rectify this problem and get us all to bed at a decent hour.

Batters are to stay in the batter’s box unless suffering from a serious equipment failure or clearly needing to remove a large object from the eye. (Or a moth from the ear). The ump must decide if you can flee the box. And only once per time at bat. No spitting on batting gloves after every pitch, tightening batting glove straps, in fact no damn batting gloves at all. Rub some dirt on your hands and man up. Stop adjusting your helmet, your cup, your chewing tobacco. Swing the bat for Christ’s sake. You are paid millions of dollars, in part, to address the ball. Do it! You do not need to relax and re-compose yourself after every pitch. You are, supposedly, a professional. You hit this damned thing for a living!

Pitchers make tens of millions of dollars a year but most can’t throw straight. In fact, a number of them seem reluctant to throw the ball at all. No more leaving the mound and wandering in the infield wilderness for forty years between pitches. You too must stop all those odd superstitious idiosyncrasies. Leave the mound, except to chase the hit ball and the batter walks to first. And throw strikes. No one is fooled when you throw three pitches up for balls and follow that demonstration by throwing the fourth pitch low in the strike zone. Throw one pitch after the other until the inning is over. It is not necessary to attempt to strike every batter out on eight or ten pitches. Almost all of them will quite willingly pop up or ground out if you repeatedly throw strikes.

Outfielders should stop throwing caught balls into the stands. Pitchers should stop demanding a new ball after every pitch. A couple of balls should last the whole game. Catchers may call time once in a game to consult with a pitcher. This is not neuroscience. Supposedly you chatted before the game about what to throw to what batter. Remember, you are professionals, right?

Relief pitchers should arrive on the mound ready to pitch. What the hell have they been doing out there all night anyway? Pitching coaches may visit the mound once each game, you decide when. Managers may make two pitching changes a game. A starting pitcher must pitch until the end of the seventh inning unless so brutally injured he has to be put down. Hopefully, the closer can pitch for two bloody innings but if that is too much for that baby on your staff use two, one for the eighth and one for the ninth but that’s it.

All games go on for five innings regardless of weather. If rain causes a delay after that, the game is called thirty minutes later unless the weather has improved enough to continue. If not, move on to the next game. We all have important things to do.

Finally, no more long singing interludes and to hell with the seventh inning stretch. The game is only going to last two hours from start to finish, no one needs to stretch anything.