There are now four teams left in the 2018 Major League Baseball playoffs.
On Friday, the National League Championship Series will begin with the surprising Milwaukee Brewers playing host to the Los Angeles Dodgers in a best-of-seven game series.
On Saturday, Boston Red Sox fans will pack Fenway Park in the first game of the American League Championship Series against the defending World Series champion Houston Astros.
Both series should be fun to watch.
If you can stay up that late, that is.
With starting times for night games beginning at 7PM Central, you can count on most games taking a minimum of four hours to play.
In four hours, I could (theoretically) can fly 1,800 miles nonstop on Southwest Airlines from Houston’s Hobby Airport into Boston (3 1/2 hours) and almost get to Fenway before the game ends!
In four hours, I could play (assuming it is daylight) 18 holes of golf.
In four hours, I should be able to do three loads of laundry that would normally be done on Saturday.
Like all major sports, we can and should pin much of the blame for these lengthy games on the additional television advertisements. The ads give the networks a chance to recoup some of their grossly overpaid television rights (which they just can’t seem to stop themselves from purchasing when the broadcast rights are up for bid). As the networks keep bidding the price up, your keister will pay the price.
However, we cannot solely blame the broadcasters for the multitude of pitchers you can expect to see being shuttled in and out of baseball games between now and October 31. The teams have caused this issue all by themselves.
It wasn’t too long ago when (a) the starting pitchers were the best pitchers on your team and (b) the relief pitchers were only called upon when things went badly for the starter or to pitch the final inning or two. Rarely would you see more than three pitchers being used during a game until the past several years.
I listened to a fascinating radio interview on Monday which featured New York Yankees pitching legend and Cy Young Award (1978), Ron “Gator” Guidry. He laughingly admitted that he hated to leave a game, because he wasn’t sure whether the Yankee relief pitchers were going to fare any better than he was doing.
When you start watching the baseball games this weekend, put a stopwatch on the time it takes to change pitchers. My best guess is five minutes (minimum). A coach will lumber to the pitching mound, talk to the pitcher, makes a gesture to the bullpen, the new pitcher will walk or jog to the mound, and then he needs another few minutes to warm-up.
For each pitching change, you are losing another five minutes of your life.
How about this idea to speed things up? I call it the “Three or Three” pitching rule. Each pitcher is required to throw for at least three innings or until the opposing team scores a minimum of three runs directly as a result of his appearance on the mound.
With three innings, the opposing team’s batters each would get a chance to see the pitcher at least once. If that pitcher is getting clobbered, though, the manager could yank that pitcher prior to three innings after he has surrendered three runs (regardless of the number of batters he had faced to that point).
What about the batters who keep stepping out of the box, you ask? Delay, delay, delay. That has become a problem, too.
MLB umpires should give each batter just one opportunity to step out of the box or call for a “Time out” during his at-bat. That would certainly help, too.
C’mon, baseball! If you want fans to stay awake and watch the games, it’s time to get creative and speed things up.
By the end of many October MLB playoff games, the term “You’re Out!” is sadly true for many of us fans!