![]() ![]() (AP Photo/Kathy Willens, File) Kathy Willens/AP 16, 2023, in Memphis, Tenn., due to heart failure, baseball Hall of Fame announced. Louis Cardinals and had a long run as the one of the country's most recognized, incisive and talkative television commentators, died Thursday morning, Feb. McCarver, the All-Star catcher and Hall of Fame broadcaster who during 60 years in baseball won two World Series titles with the St. In 1969, the sport responded by lowering the pitcher’s mound, which literally put pitchers and hitters on a more level playing field and led to increased hitting and more scoring.įILE - Baseball announcer Tim McCarver poses in the press box before the start of Game 2 of the American League Division Series on Oct. MLB faced a similar challenge a half-century ago when dominant pitching led to an era of low-scoring games that eroded attendance. MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred hopes a clock will help reverse that trend. ![]() So it’s proven to make the game faster.Īs the length of MLB games has increased, attendance has gone in the opposite direction, with smaller crowds last season than pre-pandemic levels. A clock will suck a lot of dead time from the sport and quicken the game.īaseball has already implemented the clock in the minor leagues, and last season, the average length of games dropped by 25 minutes, from 3:03 to 2:38. ![]() What could be more traditional than that? Baseball will never be a fast-paced game, but there’s no reason it has to be a slow-paced one. The implementation of the “pitch clock” will lead to more action and less standing around - in other words, more baseball. In 2020, the New York Yankees and Cleveland Indians slogged through a nine-inning game that lasted a whopping four hours and 50 minutes - longer than some doubleheaders used to take back in the day. Last year’s World Series between the Houston Astros and Philadelphia Phillies, for example, included a four-and-a-half hours game (which went into 10 innings) and a nine-inning game that lasted nearly four hours. Morry Gash/AP/FILEīut it’s the growth of interminable games that’s really the break from tradition. The new pitch clock is seen at Salt River Field Tuesday, Feb. And there’s no clock in baseball for a reason,” now-New York Mets star pitcher Max Scherzer said in 2019. All the new rules will be in effect for spring training games, which begin February 24 ahead of the 2023 season Opening Day on March 30.)įor more than 150 years, the lack of a clock on the field has distinguished baseball from other major US team sports, and some baseball purists are sure to object to adding one. (The sport is making other changes, including banning the defensive infield shift to generate more offense, and making bases slightly larger to increase safety and possibly jumpstart stolen base attempts. In addition, batters will be limited to one timeout per at-bat, and there will also be a 30-second timer between hitters. It’s even worse in the playoffs, with games often exceeding four hours.īaseball hopes to reverse that trend this year, with a 15-second clock for each pitch when the bases are empty, and 20 seconds with runners on base. In both cases, the clock was added to accelerate a plodding game.īaseball games have been getting longer in recent years, dragging on for an average of more than three hours, compared to two-and-a-half hours in the 1970s. It might sound like a radical idea, but the same concept saved the National Basketball Association nearly 70 years ago. ![]()
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