It’s that time of year again, when once again your dreams arise buoyed with hope in your breast and a song in your heart. I could go on forever, but you get the idea. Baseball is back; the full 160-something-game regular baseball season begins March 26.
Bob Kalish observes life from a placid place on the island of Arrowsic (motto: You’re not in Georgetown yet). You can reach him at bobkalish@gmail.com.
The way I like my baseball is over easy, that means over the radio. Television does not go well with baseball because there isn’t much to watch. The pitcher throws, the catcher catches, the batter hits or misses the ball and it’s all done. It used to be that in those between-pitch intervals you would talk baseball to the stranger next to you. Now you have loud music from the loudspeakers shaking the rafters.
It’s the pace of the game that lends itself to nostalgia. True Red Sox fans are still concerned about selling Babe Ruth to the Yankees like it was yesterday. What was yesterday was the recent deal that saw All-Star Mookie Betts go to the Dodgers for money we mortals can’t even understand.
Baseball was once described as America’s National Game. The rest of the world had soccer – they call it football – as their national pastime. But some baseball observers worry about the declining number of young fans, who have stopped coming to the games because the game is too slow. In the old days, most of the World Series games were played during the day in early October, instead of in November in the dark and cold and too late for school kids to watch.
Recently Major League Baseball has made a few changes in an effort to make the game move faster. Last season the average game lasted more than three hours, according to the MLB. So the new rules limit those distracting breaks between innings to two minutes, from two minutes and five seconds. The league will also get rid of the August waiver deadline. And mound visits will be limited to five rather than six as it is now.
One rule will be amended to require that starting pitchers and relief pitchers must pitch to either a minimum of three batters or to the end of a half-inning, with exceptions for incapacitating injury or illness. The intent is to speed up the game via fewer pitching changes.
Here are my own suggestions to speed up the game:
· Get rid of Velcro. Velcro makes it too easy to strap on those batting gloves while waiting for the pitcher to pitch. Just think if they had to do it the old fashioned way with a buckle, where you slide the thingamajig through the whatsis.
· Make the pitcher’s mound really high, like a mountain of sand, like the pitcher needs a ladder to reach the top.
· Follow the example of other professional sports and have a chorus of fat men in tight shorts waving pom-poms between innings. Better than the ground crew with their brushes sweeping the dirt paths between bases.
· As an alternative to running counter-clockwise around the bases, play some games running the other way. Batter hits the ball and runs to his left to get to first base, which, on other days, is third base. This will be beneficial to the players because it will prevent injuries from repetitive habits. Running the other way provides balance.
Let’s get started. Play ball.
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