Many years ago, as a (sometimes) bright-eyed and impressionable college student, my anxiety was sent spiking when a friend told me about a thing called the Death Clock, a rather terrifying early-internet production whereby you input some information and the site began a timer that counted down toward the moment when you were statistically most likely to perish.
Such a thing, which may or may not still be in existence (I haven’t been brave enough to check), was the ultimate reminder that time is our most precious commodity. After locking my eyes on the Death Clock, I’m not sure what I did next, but the odds are good that it was something more productive than fiddling around on MySpace for the next hour.
Anyway, let’s stay on the topic of time but turn it to cheerier and less morbid thoughts. What are you — overworked and overtired sports fan — going to do with all your extra free time this year?
Huh?
Well, Major League Baseball‘s implementation of a pitch clock is showing enough evidence in spring training to suggest that regular-season games are going to be trimmed by a half-hour or so, which, when spread over a schedule of 162 is akin to gifting the diehards a neat mini-vacation.
Whether you parlay that lifestyle bonus into a new hobby, a few extra workouts or, probably, waste it scrolling Instagram, baseball’s time shift is a breath of fresh air and an overwhelmingly great idea. There have been some odd moments and a quirky outcome to result from it so far, but Opening Day is still a month away, so better to get things ironed out now.
Baseball games become overextended and were in need of a good, firm hug. Post-squeeze, all the good stuff is still in there, it is now just a little more compressed into a manageable window of time that doesn’t require a couple of meals and a timely snack to get fans through a single contest.
Over the past week, one spring-training game got done and dusted in two hours and seven minutes. A consistent length was around 2:30, according to the Wall Street Journal. Last year, even in the calm clarity of spring, three hours-plus was the norm.
How MLB’s new pitch clock is changing the game of baseball
Ben Verlander and Alex Curry discuss Major League Baseball’s new pitch clock that has been implemented for the 2023 season.
It has come about because pitchers are now afforded just 20 seconds to begin their wind-up if a runner is on base and 15 ticks if they’re not.
Now, for modern fireballers who are interested in actually releasing the ball, this is no problem. For others, who might have gotten into the habit of taking their sweet time, it is going to be a shift that they’ll have to get used to quickly.
Suddenly there is a limit of the available seconds with which to adjust their cap, tap their heel, wipe their nose, have a sign language conversation with their catcher, glower at the target, wonder if they’ll solve today’s Wordle, wave to their family in the crowd — you get the drift — before finally delivering the darn ball.
That’s what baseball is losing. That’s all. It is not losing strikes and balls and hits and whiffs. It is losing the dead time that was occupied by paraphernalia and superstitious procrastination, and guess what, giving it back to us in a gift-wrapped parcel with a beautiful bow on top.
“I like it,” Yankees superstar Aaron Judge told reporters this week. “I think you can kind of play around with it a little bit. I think it definitely speeds up the game. Anything that kind of keeps the pitcher moving and on the go, and hopefully keep him out of breath, I’m looking forward to it.”
In today’s right now, express lane, fast pass world, 30 minutes is worth its weight in gold. Getting that every day, or at least every time you’re siting to watch a ball game? Heck, the possibilities are endless.
But because this is 2023, and because this is life, and because we’re talking about sports, there was always going to be some criticism of even the biggest no-brainer baseball rule change we’ve ever seen.
Strangely, the chatter got sparked not because a pitcher was taking too long, but a batter.
With the Red Sox and Braves locked in the ultimate playground fantasy scenario of being tied in the bottom of the ninth with two outs and a 3-2 count, Atlanta’s Cal Conley got dinged with a third strike because he wasn’t, as per the new rules, in the box and ready to hit with eight seconds left.
So the ultimate drama of what had been an extremely fun spring game didn’t get to play out. Game tied — which happens in preseason. No dramatic moment, except of course, for the even more dramatic umpiring moment that immediately got baseball talking.
Clearly it is not ideal for a game to be determined in such a way, but here is the point. No batter who saw, read or heard about Conley’s misfortune will forget it. On the other side, pitchers are being constantly reminded by their coaches about the new restraints. They are going to get used to it. Impending doom for the sport this is not.
“I don’t like it at all,” Phillies ace Zack Wheeler told NBC Sports Philadelphia. “I think it messes with the game too much. It just adds something to it that isn’t part of the game.”
Everyone’s opinion is worthy. What the change is introducing, I would politely suggest, is a shift where more of baseball is actually spent on baseball. Which, if you love baseball, would seem to be a particularly good thing.
So, criticize if you must, but it’s a flimsy argument. If you insist that history is being dishonored by encouraging players to play more quickly, well, the truth is that things are now returning to a pace that was in play for countless decades before things got elongated in more recent times.
Baseball was intended to go hand-in-hand with American life, for its gentle rhythms to provide the sounds of summer, to come and go and come back again the next day. It’s there, it’s daily, but it was never supposed to be all day every day.
If shorter games and frequent action just isn’t for you, I’m sorry. I’m not sure what to offer you. The clock ticks onward for all of us. If you’re still not swayed by the changes, hey, at least now there’s more free time to gripe about them.
