The way the game is played, not the game itself, is something I have been pondering over the last few days, mostly because a lot of people, Major League Baseball included, seem to really care about it. I suppose that’s a good thing. I like worrying about aesthetics as opposed to oh, I don’t know, labor strife, congressional hearings and abscesses on Roger Clemens’s ass.
Just what am I getting at? Well, let’s take this story about Bud Selig’s minions fining Cecil Cooper and Ron Gardenhire for “pace violations.”
With games seeming to run longer each year, teams were asked last month to help enforce speed-up rules already on the books.
A nine-inning game was averaging 2 hours, 51 minutes, 42 seconds this season at the time, according to the Elias Sports Bureau. That’s only 29 seconds longer than last season, but 5 1/2 minutes longer than five years ago. In 1981, an average game took 2:33.
Cooper and Gardenhire were the first two managers sanctioned under the new push.
I have no idea what they were fined for — maybe taking too long to walk out to the mound and make a pitching change, maybe a mound meeting running a little too long, who knows. I do know this. I like that MLB is concerned with this sort of thing, and I do think it’s a good idea to try and speed up the game.
Baseball is a wonderful game, but the powers that be should do everything possible to keep us from having to watch 3 1/2 hour pitch-taking festivals. Of course, there’s nothing you can do about hitters taking pitches, and there’s nothing anyone should do about it, but we can keep hitters from stepping out of the box and calling timeout constantly and we can get pitchers to deliver at a regular pace.
What other aesthetics are people worrying about? Let’s take AOL’s Gwen Knapp, who wrote a column last week about the virtue of speed and proclaimed “today, I hate the home run.” Articles like this usually bother me because they generally try to imply that team speed is a better way to win. Speed never slumps and all that garbage. But Knapp does make an interesting point:
Some of the best moments of the last five years stemmed from speed more than power. Ichiro Suzuki’s inside-the-park home run enlivened last year’s All-Star Game more than a conventional swat ever could have. Dave Roberts’ baserunning undid Mariano Rivera in the ninth inning of Game 4 in the 2004 American League Championship Series, leading to the greatest comeback in baseball history. A David Ortiz homer ultimately won the game for the Red Sox, but it was a stolen base that really ended the Curse of the Bambino.
I could watch that play, and Roberts’ toying with Rivera’s repeated pickoff attempts, endlessly. Griffey’s 600th homer? When the highlights came on TV, I hit the remote. I respect him as player, and like most people, I am happy to see him recovering his place in the sport after losing so much time to injury.
But when I visualize Griffey as a giant, I remember him racing after flyballs in center field and winning 10 Gold Gloves.
In my book, there’s nothing wrong with a home run. I enjoy watching them. I like when my team hits many of them. But speed is the most exciting thing the game has to offer. Most of baseball is standing still. It’s punctuated by moments of action. In my eyes, it doesn’t get more entertaining than a hitter trying to leg out a triple, a speedy center fielder making a diving catch or Jose Reyes swiping third base, even if those moments might not be as critical to victory as a tater.
P.S. I’ll be chatting on AOL tomorrow at 1 pm ET. (Probably at 1 pm. It could be 2 pm. What do you care, you’re going to need a diversion at work anyway).
