Dhe duel has the drama of a penalty kick and lives from the same starting position: two players who are directly opposite each other. The one with the ball, which he has to catapult into a rectangular target window. And the other, twenty yards away, trying to prevent just that.
The comparison has its limits, however. Not only because the palm-sized leather ball is thrown and not kicked. And the opponent trying to hit him has a wooden club in his hand. Rather, because this confrontation is normal routine in a baseball game. A ritual that sometimes occurs a hundred times per game and also has no direct impact on the rating of the encounter. And that traditionally drags on, interrupted by the nervous habit of the players, who keep tugging at their own shirts, trying to swing their clubs, spitting on their gloved hands or straightening the ball protection in their baggy pants.
Two hours of dead time
However, one thing this has always had a significant impact on is the length of a game. The major league record has stood at eight hours and six minutes since May 8, 1984, and was set by the Chicago White Sox and Milwaukee Brewers, who paused their floodlit game just after midnight when the score was 3-3 and didn’t play until ended the next day on a home run in the 25th inning to give Chicago a 7-6 lead.
On average, matches between the 29 American teams and one Canadian team in Major League Baseball (MLB) lasted a little over three hours. With a share of almost two hours, which is called “dead time” in America – the phases in which absolutely nothing relevant to the game happens. This indicator had been growing persistently and as if by an invisible hand for a hundred years, which was lamented by those responsible for the league for just as long.
“We can no longer turn on the strategic aspects of the game so directly,” says San Francisco coach Gabe Kapler.
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Image: Reuters
But there will only be an effective countermeasure from this season, which starts this Thursday (19.05 CET) with a full program of fifteen matches. The revolution has a name: It is the “Pitch Clock”, a stopwatch that delivers the constant back and forth between pitchers and batters under constant time pressure. The man with the ball now only has fifteen to twenty seconds to throw it, depending on the starting position. The opponent at bat must be in position by then. Rule violations will be punished.
A first test had sent a clear signal in the lower divisions last year. The total duration of games decreased by 25 minutes on average. Recent spring training encounters in Florida and Arizona, where MLB teams traditionally prepare for the new season, demonstrated the same effect. It takes some getting used to, not only for the players and referees, but also for the supporters, who like to indulge in a feeling of being forgotten when they visit the stadium.
The sluggishness is certainly one of the reasons why other, more dynamic sports in the televised age of baseball have slowly but surely overtaken it from its former position as the clear number one. Younger Americans are no longer as interested in the game’s cross-generational aura and sleepy rhythm, glorified in books and Hollywood movies. Especially as more and more top professionals come from abroad, such as from the Dominican Republic or Japan, where baseball is also a national sport. The need for action has matured in the upper levels of the league over the past few years.
In fact, the major league is not doing badly economically. “The World Baseball Classic that just ended was a resounding success,” according to the New York Times. “MLB generated record revenues of nearly $11 billion in 2022. No other sport comes even close to the event volume of baseball – 81 home games for each of the 30 clubs, with an average of 26,566 fans per game, far exceeding the capacity of any NBA or NHL arena.”
However, the number of visitors in 2022 is almost 19 percent below that of 2007. Gabe Kapler, head coach of the San Francisco Giants, can get a lot out of the clock as an innovation: “For us, this means that we are no longer so directly involved in the strategic aspects of the game turn on,” he said. “Now the players have to take over that.” Just like in the ancient times.
