Time flies

Steph Chambers photo

Worrying that games are lasting too long, Major League Baseball announces 69 years ago today that pitchers must deliver the ball within 20 seconds of toeing the rubber.

Sounds reasonable, if only put into practical use back in 1955 rather than only simply existing on paper.

Now imagine how much quicker the games of the next couple of generations would last if Major League Baseball has the foresight to truly apply those rules to slow-moving batters like Mike Hargrove, Nomar Garciaparra and David Ortiz, as well as to commercial-driven ESPN and its desire to make every Yankee-Red Sox game last as long as a Leon Uris novel.

Turns out that Major League Baseball needs 68 years before actually following its newfangled rule from 1955 as it finally introduces a hard-and-fast pitch clock in the majors in 2023.

So, what happens?

After 68 years of not following its own rules, Major League Baseball sees a significant improvement on the length of its games, going from a staggering average of 3 hours and 4 minutes in 2022 to a zippier 2:40 in 2023.

New York Times photo

That would be a total savings of nearly 65 hours of game time per team over the course of a full season.

Predictably, not everyone likes the pitch clock.

“Having a pitch clock, if you have ball-strike implications, that’s messing with the fabric of the game,” Hall of Fame-bound pitcher Max Scherzer says of the clock, which starts in 2015 in the minor leagues.

“There’s no clock in baseball,” Scherzer says, “and there’s no clock in baseball for a reason.”

Just as predictably, not everyone agrees with Scherzer’s tick-tock take.

“Let’s be very clear,” says former pitcher Curt Schilling, who like Scherzer owns a Hall of Fame-worthy resume. “The only pitchers that will be affected by the pitch clock are pitchers that suck.

“No good pitcher is going to be bothered by the pitch clock,” Schilling says. “Good pitchers never, never will be affected by the clock because good pitchers always work fast.”