It seems like every year, Major League Baseball games keep getting longer and longer. As wonderful as America's pastime sport is, fans have been complaining that the games are going too slow. I mean, last season, the average game lasted 3 hours and post-season games went even longer.
MLB officials are finally addressing our complaints and have promised to come up with a solution to make the games shorter. We do know, though, that the league won't do anything that will cost them a lot of money. The longer the games, the more commercials and spending that the fans are doing.
Yet, is that really what baseball has become?
A little bit of history
Games weren't always this long. In the 1900's, the majority of the games played were under 2 hours. Obviously, things were different back then but baseball was still baseball. Yes, America's pastime sport is timeless but what started to add a lot of time to the games wasn't the action.
With the advent of TV and broadcasting games, baseball's game time started to increase in the 1950's thanks to commercial breaks. By 2014, the average game length was 3 hours and we haven't lowered it since.
Spotted at tonight's #Bluejays game. In the 2nd inning! Hang in there, trooper. pic.twitter.com/oTfndAOwMl
— Brad Gagnon (@Brad_Gagnon) April 14, 2016
Suggestions to make it shorter
In the New York Times article, Baseball's Too Slow. Here's How You Fix It, they asked reporters and readers to give suggestions on how to make the game shorter.
Here are some of the things they came up with:
- Shorten the time between innings aka commercial breaks
- Limit the number of mound visits during the game
- Make a rule that batters can't step out of the plate unless injured
- Change the number of innings from 9 to 7
- Every foul ball is a strike, even the third one
- Take away the non-baseball moments
MLB has announced that they made some changes in the rules such as creating an intentional walk signal and giving managers only 30 seconds to challenge a call.
These rules may help make the game go faster but not by a lot.
Opening Day starts on April 2nd, 2017 and teams are getting ready for another exciting year of baseball. What do you think? Should MLB shorten the length of their games?
