The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

No, the link shows how much has changed since the game was created..change isn't a bad thing, there is room for improvement.

When i was a kid I used to hope for extra innings so I could watch more baseball.

The reason those proverbial chicks dug the long ball is because they don't appreciate a well-played and professionally executed game of baseball.

There is not a damned thing wrong with people who are bull shitters.

Other than the lowering of the mound, the game is pretty much the same as it's been since 1901.

I'm amazed still when a given person talks about how awful a game is with a 3-1 or 4-3 run total (or the like), but then complains how long games take.

I mean ... does one not see the inherent cognitive dissonance necessary to want a quicker game (in this case via fewer runs and errors) but also want more runs (thus making the game go longer in order to score those runs)?

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I have no idea when TV Timeouts came along, but obviously that adds 2+ minutes per half inning assuming there are no injuries or pitching changes.

It might interest one to note that the length of a baseball game is no longer, and on average less, than an NFL game.

It might interest one to note that the length of a baseball game is no longer, and on average less, than an NFL game.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

If there were 16-20 baseball games a year that would be just fine.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

Entirely irrelevant. A person sits down to watch 'x' program for 'y' amount of time. Whether it's baseball, football, a season of Always Sunny in Philadelphia, or a rerun of Son of Svengoolie doesn't mean shit to a tree.

Or is this a case of people being forced to watch baseball games (likely after being forced to listen to B&B)?

So why did you even bring up the NFL then if it is irrelevant?

I'm not aware of any hue and cry from the masses breathlessly bemoaning how long it takes to get through a given game of football (which, despite it having a finite amount of gametime allotted, takes longer to complete) like we see with those who can't wait to slice and dice time from a given game of baseball (which, despite having no limit to how long a game can take, doesn't take quite as long to finish).

So I don't understand why baseball needs to trim the fat while football is just hunky dory with the common consumer. A person sits down to watch whichever, I don't know why top of mind would be how fast this can be done so one can move onto something else as though once they began viewing they were conscripted to finish the even in full.

As far as I'm concerned, a lot of the 'problem' isn't with the product necessarily, but is instead placed at the feet of consumer. Maybe it's like that Principal Skinner monologue about it not being possible for him to be wrong, it must in fact be the children who are wrong (though in this case, he would be right).

I'm not aware of any hue and cry from the masses breathlessly bemoaning how long it takes to get through a given game of football (which, despite it having a finite amount of gametime allotted, takes longer to complete) like we see with those who can't wait to slice and dice time from a given game of baseball (which, despite having no limit to how long a game can take, doesn't take quite as long to finish).

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.

I'm not aware of any hue and cry from the masses breathlessly bemoaning how long it takes to get through a given game of football (which, despite it having a finite amount of gametime allotted, takes longer to complete) like we see with those who can't wait to slice and dice time from a given game of baseball (which, despite having no limit to how long a game can take, doesn't take quite as long to finish).

So I don't understand why baseball needs to trim the fat while football is just hunky dory with the common consumer. A person sits down to watch whichever, I don't know why top of mind would be how fast this can be done so one can move onto something else as though once they began viewing they were conscripted to finish the even in full.

As far as I'm concerned, a lot of the 'problem' isn't with the product necessarily, but is instead placed at the feet of consumer. Maybe it's like that Principal Skinner monologue about it not being possible for him to be wrong, it must in fact be the children who are wrong (though in this case, he would be right).

You're getting to the heart of the matter in this post. Football is specifically designed for the modern TV zombie with the attention span of a gnat. "And we'll be right back after this commercial break!" You never hear anyone celebrate the commercials in any other form of entertainment. The NFL has incorporated them into the package. It's not a bug, it's a feature! It's like Tommy Hilfiger selling you a shirt for $100 with his name all over it.

I have MANY years of experience in trying to appreciate steaming piles of dogshit.

. . . On May 31, 1975, Kaat and the Sox lost a 2-0 game to Detroit that lasted an hour, 35 minutes. He routinely had games in the 1:45-1:50 range. If you blinked, you missed three innings.

So if you are looking for an expert to discuss one of baseball’s biggest problems–the maddening slow pace of play–you couldn’t find a better one than Kaat.

Make no mistake, Kaat’s passion for baseball is as high at 74 as it was at 20 when he broke in with the Washington Senators in 1959. Kaat will join Bob Costas for Game 2 of the St. Louis-Pittsburgh series Friday at 1 p.m. (ET) on MLB Network. He also is slated to work a playoff game Monday for MLB Network.

Kaat, though, thinks the game would be better if it moved quicker. He hardly is alone here. Game times have become bloated in the last 20 years. For instance, Game 3 of the 2012 World Series took three hours, 25 minutes. A slugfest, right? No, that was for a 2-0 victory for San Francisco over Detroit.

“Don’t misunderstand me,” Kaat said. “It’s not that I want to get the game over with. It’s just that 2-1 game in three hours, 15 minutes is too long. It’s not necessary.”

Television obviously is a culprit by adding more commercials. To show how much times have changed, Kaat told an amusing story of White Sox General Manager Roland Hemond asking him to take more time between innings.

“I worked so fast, a couple of times, they’d come back from commercial, and there would be one, even two outs,” said the 283-career game winner. “I didn’t have compassion for TV back then. My focus was on pitching. I said to Roland, ‘Do I have to?’ He said, ‘No.’ So I didn’t.”

Any chance of that request being turned down today? Ha. No way, not in an era where TV is king. Kaat thinks the long gaps between innings (two-and-a-half to three minutes) have an impact that carries over once play resumes.

“Players now sit in the dugout and wait because they know they’re going to get two-and-a-half minutes,” Kaat said. “It makes the whole pace, running back on to the field and then playing the game, much slower.”

TV, though, doesn’t get the entire blame here. In Game 2 of the 1965 World Series, Kaat and Minnesota took a 5-1 victory over Sandy Koufax and the Los Angeles Dodgers. The game took two hours, 13 minutes. So let’s add an additional 30 minutes for commercials in the modern telecast. That’s still a game time of two hours, 43 minutes.

Now you’ll be hard-pressed to find a post-season game under three hours. Tuesday, Pittsburgh’s 6-2 victory over Cincinnati went three hours, 14 minutes.
Kaat jokes that he blames Ken “Hawk” Harrelson for introducing the batting glove to baseball. Now every hitter has to step out of the box and adjust his glove after a pitch. He actually charted the numbing routine during a playoff game a few years ago, and it added 35 minutes to the game.

“If Mickey Mantle took a pitch, he’d keep his back foot in place and reset his front foot,” Kaat said. “He’d be ready to go. You never see that today.”

The other “little things,” as Kaat says, bog things down: Repeated catcher’s visits to the mound; more pitching changes than back in his era; and don’t get him started on theme music for individual hitters.

“Now they all wait in the on-deck circle for their theme music to begin,” Kaat said. “It’s ridiculous.”

The concern, Kaat and others say, is that long games are turning off viewers, especially in the younger demographics. This is a fast-paced society and games that run on at three hours, 30 minutes are too languid to captivate short attention spans, young and old.

The future holds the possibility to be great or terrible, and since it has not yet occurred it remains simultaneously both.