An immodest proposal
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My preference would be to have regular baseball on Friday, Saturday and Sunday and throughout the Playoffs. But, M-Th I would prefer a clock or at least a mechanism to speed the game up. Who can take their kids to a Wednesday night baseball game and stay up? Who can wake up and get to work at 7 AM the next morning and not feel it at least a little bit? A little compromise would work. JMO though.
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A potentially revolutionary idea. 10 pitch max on each plate appearance - if pitch 10 is a ball, batter walks. If its a strike or foul, batter is out.
I’d also do a clock on pitching changes. Too often, the manager goes out and has a “meeting” to let the pitcher get a few more throws in from the pen, then the pitcher comes in and gets his 10 warm up pitches. In the playoffs where there are so many pitching changes, even shaving 30 seconds off each of these could really cut down on the total time for the game.
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@justanotherfan No more meetings at the mount, period. They are all just tactical time delays.
And 8 pitches would be better, IMO. But i really like the ideas!
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I like to see a good 15-pitch battle between a hitter and pitcher once in a while. Part of the game (wears out the pitcher).
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DanR said:
That was pretty ridiculous, but I’m not sure they could have sped that one up. Maddon and Baker over-managing. 23 hits. 22 left on base. 13 walks. Over 350 pitches. 14 pitchers used and a few of those guys were pretty slow, but not the worst in MLB.
They don’t have to speed it up if they don’t want to. Just end the game in the 6th inning like it was at 10 oclock!
On the number of pitchers, limiting pitching changes might help. Chapman came in the other night I believe in the middle of a count. That’s a no-no. I do recognize last night is a do or die playoff and managers are just pulling out all the stops so maybe playoff games get an extra 15 minutes in my scenario.
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mayjay said:
@wissox So what happens if a playoff game is tied after 3 hours?
And, regular season, lots of ties to make it seem so very worthwhile to sit through those 3 hours?
Love baseball as it is. Anyone can’t stand the timing, take a nap!
Extra innings are acceptable, no one likes ties, but if they exceed the pace of 20 minutes per inning, both teams lose!
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justanotherfan said:
A potentially revolutionary idea. 10 pitch max on each plate appearance - if pitch 10 is a ball, batter walks. If its a strike or foul, batter is out.
I’d also do a clock on pitching changes. Too often, the manager goes out and has a “meeting” to let the pitcher get a few more throws in from the pen, then the pitcher comes in and gets his 10 warm up pitches. In the playoffs where there are so many pitching changes, even shaving 30 seconds off each of these could really cut down on the total time for the game.
10 pitch limit has some potential. Not fair to give a guy a walk though if the count is say 1-2 and he draws a ball.
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@wissox He would have earned it. He just fouled off at least 6 pitches at that point…
10 minute half innings or 3 outs, whichever comes first, would be really interesting to watch. Has to be a pitch every 25 seconds for all balls not put in play or it is a ball.
There are so many options for speeding up the game. Like I said, I just think that it needs to be a M-Th change though. Last nights game was awesome and intense. I loved it. But a regular season game that starts at 9 on West Coast is almost impossible to finish as a fan.
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How’s this for groundbreaking ? Sounds like you’re the one getting tired of watching so simple fix. Set your own clock to turn it off whenever it makes you happy or don’t watch in the first place. Likely if your team was in it instead of the Cubs you wouldn’t mind if outcome was in the sox favor ??
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@mayjay Flip a bir_ , um, coin …
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@wissox Maybe those of you who don’t like it the way it is now should just tape it and watch later on fast forward!
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@mayjay Maybe those of you who like it the way it is will like it even more if the game is played at a faster pace.
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@Kcmatt7 That would hurt my ability to channel surf between lengthy delays and pitching changes!
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@mayjay I miss channel surfing (I stream everything from my parents TV subscription). That is where I used to learn all my bar trivia!
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@Kcmatt7 That reminds me: bars might not like your idea of shortening games. Vendors at the parks, too.
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globaljaybird said:
How’s this for groundbreaking ? Sounds like you’re the one getting tired of watching so simple fix. Set your own clock to turn it off whenever it makes you happy or don’t watch in the first place. Likely if your team was in it instead of the Cubs you wouldn’t mind if outcome was in the sox favor ??
I watch postseason baseball. This isn’t about my dislike of the Cubs. If it was the Sox, I’d still be just as upset about the marathon game. I have a job as do most of us. Can’t stay up til all hours and shouldn’t have to. The crappy Bears are drawing better ratings here in Chicago than the playoff WS champs. Baseball has a problem. My solution was obviously nonsense. I guess you couldn’t see that.
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@mayjay Vendors at parks close and quit selling early all the time. Bars might like it better. I’d be more likely to go watch a game at a bar during the week if I knew it would be over at 10pm or else it would be such a good game it went into extra innings so it would be worth staying up the extra time for.
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@wissox Waaaah ! Then just be a smart A & get that butt outta bed & go to work & pay
that tax man …
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Overly long games is what baseball does. It’s like…their thing.
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@Kcmatt7 Vendors have minimum quotas which in most places, is a pre pay so when it’s gone that’s it.
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@globaljaybird Wow. Just grinding an ax and you’re turning it into something serious. Why can’t you just discuss things instead of turning it into insults?
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@globaljaybird I don’t know if you’re proving my point or trying to make a new one?
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@wissox Ok let’s get this straight. You digress… Poor me … So the Bears ratings blah blah-stock in media business? Huh? Who cares about ratings? Look, if you put out a thread & want discussion that only meets your PC criteria then put in the post “for peckerwoods only.” If you’re that sensitive to a counter view then either get some Kleenex or back off. Posting as some sort of pompous ass (many of us remember That’s It I’m Done?) is clearly the style that has come across from you so just knock yourself out & I will no longer acknowledge you or any possible pseudo intellectual nea bs. Have a great day. Done
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What in the actual bleep is going on in this thread right now?
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@Kcmatt7 Just saying vendors must pay in advance for the products they sell so they will never purchase more than they can sell. If they sell a beer
for 10 bucks they likely pay about $8 or $9 for it so margin wise there’s not much room for errors. I recall years ago guys paying well over $100 a case for crappy 
beer like Schlitz or Colt 45.
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@globaljaybird Gotcha. Well I would think that a time limit might actually help them figure out exactly how much beer to buy and get a more accurate number on what they think they can sell in a game. Right? I could definitely be wrong on this.
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@BShark Pent up aggression apparently.
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For the record I would be against a clock/time limit in baseball but I can understand why people would want it.
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Please be done @globaljaybird @wissox too many locked threads lately. We all have the Jayhawks in common let’s try to meet up there.
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@BShark I don’t like the time limit idea either. But I would like them to attempt to move games a little bit faster. I think an electronic strike zone would take minutes off of a game. Just from players and managers needlessly arguing balls and strikes and getting tossed for it and then throwing fits that cause delays. I think the replays should be done in 30 seconds or less. If you can’t tell in 30 seconds, call on the field stands. Changes like these would speed it up just a little. Honestly, I just want baseball played as much as possible without watching wasted time. I’d like a rule where managers can’t leave the dugout anymore. No more mound visits to stall. No going out and throwing a tantrum. If a manager leaves the dugout and goes onto the field, he’s suspended for 5 games automatically. Have you ever seen a manager argue a call and it get reversed? Not challenged a call on replay, but actually argue one with the umpire and win? Nope. So cut that part out of the game.
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@Kcmatt7 Oh I am hardcore #teamrobotumps
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BShark said:
What in the actual bleep is going on in this thread right now?
I just want shorter baseball games.
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@wissox Yeah, it’s a real issue imo.
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dylans said:
Please be done @globaljaybird @wissox too many locked threads lately. We all have the Jayhawks in common let’s try to meet up there.Not sure what I did wrong. I just proposed a ridiculous change in baseball that I know doesn’t have a snowballs chance and next thing I know, well…
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@wissox Nothing. Thank you.
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Anyone believe me now that these games are too long?
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@wissox Utterly exhausted, but worth every minute. We just need to get rid of all those west-of-here time zones, standardize on EDT nationwide, and start games at 6 pm my time.
I am sure y’all can get used to the sun rising at 4, 5, and 6 in the morning over the winter. It would involve much less disruption to the American way of life than changing the rules of baseball (shudder…).
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For 25 runs, 10 innings, and 14 pitchers used, I thought the game length was fine. If not for some bonehead plays, it would have ended it sooner. Humongous strike zone probably sped things up a bit.
Looks like we lost @globaljaybird
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@DanR yeah I’m afraid so. He got the boot awhile back and has declined to come back. I don’t blame him.
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Love me some George Carlin. His Baseball vs. Football bit is awesome!
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Yours is clearly a popular suggestion.
Alas, I am old fashioned about baseball. Baseball is the last connection we have to the republic era of America. Even basketball was born in the John Dewey cultural re-engineering era of Globalization 1.0. Baseball is the only bench mark America has left to use to compare what we are with what we were.
Also, I am getting particularly cranky about change generally, because it is so obvious that our country is being calculatedly convulsed with the very same means used in the Middle East, and Europe and Latin America. They just have not ratcheted the juice up to where DHS gets to bring its new 2000 light tanks out to start restoring order. But you can see the writing on the wall. Antifa on the left and Neo Nazis on the right are our versions of ISIS, Al Qaeda, etc. They are fully subsidized by the Deep State and at any moment can be switched on to terrorist organizations that can be used to rationalize the DHS tank corp and nanobot swarms and the 5G wireless shizzle that can reputedly kill off the bacteria in our gut biomes and weaken us all to helplessness with a properly distributed series of antennas parked in street lamps.
Oh, but there I go again being jaybate 1.0.
We’re just talking about baseball, Ray.
Every rule change, except for those wiping out exclusion based on prejudices, that has ever been done to baseball has made it worse.
Look at the oldest footage you can find of baseball. It was a better game than it is now, except for allowing all categories of persons to play, if they’ve got the talent. It looked better in the old days. And the farther back you go, the better the uniforms looked. Wool should still be used. The old cleats actually look like baseball shoes instead of soccer shoes.The older gloves actually look like gloves instead of artificial limb augmentations. The baseball caps were perfect at the beginning. The old socks were better.
I’m not harkening back to my time. My youth was the beginning of the ruination of baseball. i’m talking about 1900-1910. That is no more my time than the man in the moon’s. But that was always the best baseball played, at the best scale of crowds for the game, in the neatest stadiums. Fields were never meant to be perfect. I hate perfect fields. Baseball fields are supposed to look like fields beside factories surrounded by real bleachers. They aren’t supposed to look like golf greens set inside “multi-use infrastructure.” And Dugouts are not supposed to look like Mies Van Der Rohe designed them.
And I hate perfect seats. Baseball isn’t even supposed to have seats. Its supposed to have bleachers and grand stands. I hate plastic, ergonomically correct seats.
I don’t care what they do to basketball and football arenas and seats. All I care about is the game of basketball and I wish football would be banned. But Baseball? This is the last shred of culture America has left. Nothing else remains. Its all gone. All of it. Or what remains isn’t worth noticing. Its so repugnant to look at and recall that you don’t. Well, wait a minute. I drive by some old barns that still orient me. But if truth be known most of them don’t go back farther than the 1920s, even the dilapidated ones.
I got to flea markets to be near drive ins. I hate flea markets. If the drive in screen has been removed, I wouldn’t go near a drive in flea market. But if the screen is still up? I will drive up to an hour to just to see it. Seeing it at least is a bench mark between 1960 and now.
Whats the only remotely defensible reason for KU football? The lower facade of Memorial Stadium. That’s all. Nothing else about KU football should be permitted to continue. But the lower facade of the Memorial Stadium is a bench mark between the 1920s and now.
They’ve disfigured all of the best football stadia in our country completely. the Big House in Ann Arbor? God how I love going to a game there. Best football stadium I have ever attended by a mile. But they completely destroyed its appearance with updating and with classroom structures affixed to it. Tragic.
The Rose Bowl still feels kind of good, especially at the flea market.
But how many times can a person with a brain go see a football game played by a team that hasn’t been cool since Tommy Prothro and Gary Beban.
I’ve tried the LA Coliseum and I would frankly rather be sent to Gitmo. It was shit from the moment it was built and they’ve made it worse.
Please god, don’t put a time clock on baseball. Baseball was adapted from a British game back when time was not of the essence in America, and had not been in England either.
If I were like you and watched a lot of baseball, I would want a clock.
But I only go to one game every year, or two, and really don’t watch much on TV.
I go to a baseball game like a kind of pilgrammage into the American legacy.
I go to sit there and have hotdogs and sip as much beer as I still can without guzzling it. I go to recall my dad. I go to hear the crack of the ball on a wood bat. I go to hear the vendors. I dearly wish they would rip out all of the electronics and digitalia from modern parks and just have guys up hanging big black cards with white numbers out in the outfield to tell us what inning and score we are at after the fifth beer.
I have already committed to buy a boater for the first time in my life and I am going to wear it to the next baseball game I go to next year.
I also like to wear a Fedora to night games. I don’t wear my Fedora anywhere else. Just to the baseball park.
But now I am ready for a Boater.
Rock Chalk!!
P.S.: And I never wear anything synthetic to a baseball game. It has to be cotton, or wool, or maybe hemp. Gotta be leather shoes, or Chucks. I would give a lot of money for a pair of Chucks with designer soles made from real rubber from a Michelin rubber plantation. Real rubber is soooooooo0 much better than vinyl, or petro rubber.
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@dylans @DanR in fairness, @BShark banned him for a couple hours because he felt @globaljaybird was being overly personal and negative. While I probably wouldn’t have banned him at the time, I get why BShark did it, I know things had gotten heated. BShark is a global moderator as is @Crimsonorblue22 to help moderate, and @dylans and @bskeet also have admin rights. I think over the years things have been pretty democratic and I don’t want to get away from that. After the incident @globaljaybird was unbanned but decided to delete his account. I hope @globaljaybird gets the itch to come back. He’s one of us and he is missed, as is @brooksmd who also decided to delete his account earlier in the summer.
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It wasn’t just that incident either. It had been building up. However I later learned something that if I would have known, I would have just let it go. I hope he comes back too, it was never my intention to run him off.
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DanR said:
For 25 runs, 10 innings, and 14 pitchers used, I thought the game length was fine. If not for some bonehead plays, it would have ended it sooner. Humongous strike zone probably sped things up a bit.
I’m not ok with 5:17 to play 10 innings. It ended at 12:40 my time. It was in the 8th inning at 11:30 when I finally gave it up. Most famous game ever, game 6 of 1975 world series. That’s the Carlton Fisk waving it fair game, was 12 innings long. Lasted 4 hours. Even by 1975 standards that was a long game. But it took them almost an hour and a half less to play 2 MORE innings.
In 1975 102 batters came to the plate, last night, 98 batted, only four different. Last night 29 batters either walked or struck out. In 1975 23 either walked or struck out. That’s significant because those are time consuming at bats. 1975 12 pitchers used. Last night a horrendous 14 pitchers were used.
And a big difference, we all went to bed (I was in 5th grade, mom and dad let me stay up, although I never would have stayed up til 1:40 like it was in NJ where I was a kid) at a late, but not ridiculous hour.
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@jaybate-1-0 good stuff professor. You certainly do know my post was kind of in jest. I don’t like to tinker with baseball rules, although unifying the DH, or better yet, getting rid of it in both leagues would make my heart glad. This newish commish makes me nervous because he has talked about crappy rules like banning defensive shifts and other bad ideas.
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@wissox Could have been a quicker game, no doubt. Both teams were in freakout mode all night every time a pitcher threw a couple consecutive balls. Obviously all the concern worked out on the scoreboard.
I’d like to see batter stay in the box the entire at bat, and pitcher pitch (or try a pick off attempt), once they put their foot on the rubber. End the mind games.
Get rid of batting gloves too!
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@approxinfinity Too bad they bailed. I’d like to see both @globaljaybird and @brooksmd come back.
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There’s been chatter about the ball not being right for this world series. Harder to grip because it’s kind of slippery, just the way Gaylord Perry liked it.
