Great article by Simmons, most of it directed by this year's Red Sox, but the last point is spot on.

http://sports.espn.go.com/espn/page2/st ... ons/100729

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Damn, that's a nice article. The fact that for the sox/AL game times keep going up because of pitch count milking (not a problem IMO) the DH rule (didn't know it had that effect, but when you don't have a really bad hitter coming up once or twice...) and all these dumb pitching changes is kind of depressing. I would not go to a 3 hour 45 minute game if I could have just watched it on TV and changed channels during the commercials.

I'd like to know what the stats of game times are for the NL, it would be a cool comparison.

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"Call a cop he robbed Delmore blind!!!"
Rick Jeanerette after Marty Biron's diving save back in 2000.

"I'm going to go to the spa and have a hot tub and massage and relax," Miller said. "That's it, and it's back to work tomorrow." Ryan Miller after clinching the North East division.

this could be said about any sport, who the fuck cares?

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Ratings in football aren't going down. Even the NBA is having ratings success.

Baseball games are too long.

the people who make that argument clearly are not baseball fans. its an untimed sport, and theres nothing they can do to change it.

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A casual fan will probably have a hard time getting into a game where every batter feels the need to rearrange his shit after every pitch, and after you pass the 6th inning pitchers get swapped every 3 batters. With Football and Basketball there is stuff happening almost all the time, which tends to keep viewers more interested.

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"Call a cop he robbed Delmore blind!!!"
Rick Jeanerette after Marty Biron's diving save back in 2000.

"I'm going to go to the spa and have a hot tub and massage and relax," Miller said. "That's it, and it's back to work tomorrow." Ryan Miller after clinching the North East division.

As American culture becomes more and more impatient and relies more on constant stimulation and instant gratification, baseball will fade more and more. The casual fans are leaving already and the diehards who fill the stands will only last so long. The same can be said of any sport, but baseball is declining right now.

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mechaphil

You just called Herr Squanto a non-fan of baseball?

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mechaphil

If you make everything equal, stadium sizes, number of games, baseball finishes dead last in attendance.

The biggest issue with it is that there's an old guard that wants to preserve some invisible romantic notion of baseball that they have rather than evolving the game along with technology.

How can you honestly look at ballooning game lengths and not say that there's something wrong? To be perfectly fair, the ball is in play roughly the same amount of time in football as in baseball (11-12 minutes) and commercials are partly to blame for increasing games lengths in both sports.

How can you look at fucking 8PM start times between two east coast teams (Philadelphia and Tampa Bay, NYY and Philadelphia) with games that end past midnight during the week and not go, "here is a retarded sport that lacks even the most microscopic shred of common sense and seems hell bent on driving away as many fans as possibly to fulfill the Star Trekian prophecy that has the sport dying in the middle of the 21st century?"

Seriously, you can't take a fan that says fuck this shit because he wants to sleep more than four hours and lambaste him when MLB has no reason not to move the start times of those games up an hour or more. Its fucking Philly and Tampa Bay/NYY. You think anyone on the West coast gives even the slightest bit of a shit? Fuck em, they're not watching.

I do agree a bit, in that there is little you can do to speed up the games. I don't think putting a time limit on anything is palatable. Unfortunately, the waiting game has become part of the culture of baseball. I think the responsibility lands on the shoulders of the umpires in telling hitters and pitchers to stop fucking around and start calling balls and strikes more often against players who can't get their shit together. If you're so superstitious that you have to go through 879 rituals before you get in the box and hit, you need to stop playing baseball and go hide in your panic room from the illuminati controlled robot monkeys.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Hockey is great on time.

2:40 games
Minimal commercials (FUCK YOU NFL)
Something is ALWAYS happening.
People beating the shit out of each other.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Sorry I used my angry voice, but some of the decisions MLB makes are mind-bogglingly retarded, that Bud Selig can only be a plant by the NFL to ruin baseball.

(Note: Theory created by Bill Simmons replacing Bud Selig with Gary Bettman and NFL with NBA).

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

of course baseball is dead last in attendance. they play every day for 6 months, the same team 3 to5 times in a row for a series.


baseball is unpredictable. ive been to games when a pitcher is on cruise control and its less then two hours. others that are 4 hours long. its great. nothing better then going to a game and ya just never know what happens. ive almost seen a no hitter before.

if ya dont it, drat. its baseball, and there is no sport better. except water polo.

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Pretty sure they also have the cheapest tickets.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

so? you do realize that hockey does the same thing, finals games dont start till like 8 either (i dont watch em)

alot of baseball games start at 1 (every tigers home thursday game this year is a 1. pm start) because of travel. thats how it works.

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Because one of the time zones in this years finals is on central time.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

And a lot of Detroit's fans are on central time. Plus NHL games rarely last over 3 hrs so they rarely go past 11.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

the finals always start at 8. basketball does the same thing (hell, the NCAA championship game usually starts at 8:37)

most baseball games last well under 3 hours.

in fact, of the 15 games today, 3 lasted over 3 hours, and one only because it went into 11 innings. the shortest was 2 hours, 12 minutes.

many detroit fans are not in central time zone. the last game of every series, for every team, is a 1, or some times 4 oclock start so the departing team (s) have more travel time.

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Sorry, but Baseball won't survive in this time and age when the games are getting longer and longer and the game does nothing.

Most people don't want to watch two guys scratch their nuts every 10 seconds or wait for a pitch every 5 minutes or 10 minutes. At least in Hockey, Football, and Basketball the game doesn't stop unless the ball goes out of play, or the clock stops.

Also Hockey games, even the ones that start at 7:30PM, are done before the West Coast games at 10PM, almost always. I guess Football could last up to three hours, but not much longer than 3 hours unless it goes to OT. Every 1pm football game normally is over before the 4pm games start too.

You could say the game is long, thanks to commercials, because during the Olympics, the hockey games were over in around 2 hours because they had no commercials.

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You're telling me there isn't a significant number of Detroit fans in Indiana, Illinois, and Wisconsin? I call bullshit.

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Proud LGBTQQ Individual

Really? I'm not a baseball fan? I don't obsess over the Red Sox or anything....

I LOVE baseball. I love everything about the game...except for the fact that it's rare for me to have over 3 hours of uninterrupted time on a regular basis to sit down and watch an entire outing. I have shit to do. I try to sit down and watch one or two games a week as best I can, but most of the time the MLB TV condensed game is all I can fit in. The AVERAGE length of a baseball game is currently 3 hours. It's the rule, not the exception.

Technology is part of the ratings downfall too. I can watch an entire condensed game in less than 15 minutes, and see everything of note that happened. No, it's not the same as watching the whole thing, but it's really close, and fits in well with people who have busy schedules.

Nobody is shitting on baseball here Mike. There are simply some valid reasons why TV ratings for the game are not what they once were. There are places were baseball could do well to shave some time off the games. Batters shouldn't be stepping out of the box after every pitch to adjust every piece of equipment they have on. (Yes, that meas you Papi.) Pitchers shouldn't shake off 6 pitches when they can generally only throw 3 anyways. I love watching a guy like Halliday work. He throws, gets the ball back, and gets ready to go again. It must be a joy to play behind him.

These are small things that can be done to improve the perception that the game is slow, even if a 'long' MLB game is the same length as a football game.