One thing missing from Amalie Benjamin’s excellent piece on baseball games getting longer ...
MLB is ON IT.
... is any mention of Bud Selig, who in 1997, declared:
[T]here are things we can do to quicken the pace of the game ... When a pitcher gets the ball, he should throw it. There’s too much stepping in and out, pitchers fooling around. This might be as critical an issue as there is right now.
Soon after that, the critical issue became contraction. Really, the critical issue is always, “How do we stop giving so much money to the players?”
Anyway, Benjamin quotes Joe Torre, who assures us that MLB recognizes the problem and that a lot of smart and capable people are working it, so expect a solution around the time Selig retires or the heat death of the universe. Whichever comes first.
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