Shades of the Past
 

Remember when a game finishing in less than 2 hours actually happened and when games lasting more than 2 1/2 hours were considered long.

Last night 221 pitches were used yielding 7 hits (including a first inning home run) in the Angels 1-0 victory over Oakland. The home team batted in the bottom of the ninth and No mid inning pitching changes were needed either. Time of the game 2 hours and 14 minutes. Has there been a shorter one this year. Probably not.

I don't think so.
Remember, the longer the games, the more food ($8.00 hot dogs) and drink ($12.00 beers) the fans consume. So why would they shorten games?
Bob

August 10, 1944. Charles "Red" Barrett of the Boston Braves pitched a two-hit 2-0 shutout against Cincinnati throwing only 58 pitches in the nine inning complete game, an average of 6.4 per inning. Unsurprisingly, since each Red saw an average of two pitches, there were no walks or strikeouts. Reds pitcher Bucky Walters obviously was working economically as well because the game was (and is) the quickest night game in history at one hour-fifteen minutes.

There were very few fans at the Angels-As game. Shutting down the concessions early and sending the vendors home early probably was a good move financially.

And the more screen time for the Aflac duck.

I awoke around 2pm EST time and Yankees were still playing in extras. On PST, but still. . . . .

Yankees had bases loaded in top of 12th or 13th and didn't score. Starting to think April-June was their apex this year and a disaster is slowly unfolding.

Perhaps to get more folks to come to games, to watch games on TV, and to listen to games on radio?

I try not to look through rose tinted, nostalgia glasses (especially for times that I wasn't alive for, is there such a word for that?) however, one has to miss the simplicity and length of baseball games from years passed.

I understand things change, but the length of the game has to correlate to the amount of relief pitchers that are being used now. Combine that with hitters still stepping out of the box in a consistent manner. All of it adds up. The pitch clock they want to introduce seems to make things a little better in the minors, lets hope it translates to the bigs.

All that being said I'd kill for pitchers to go the distance on a consistent basis. We see it very rarely nowadays.

Watching some games from the 70's and 80's, I am struck by how quickly batters were ready for the next pitch. Even if the pitcher went to grab the rosin bag, the hitter would be in the box.

Using that as a memory refresher, I have not noticed that much more of an overall pitcher delay than back then. What I DO notice is a pitcher now deferring to a batter who is dilly dallying around. More often than not, it seems you'll see a pitcher on the rubber ready to go for 10 sec, and then have to step off due to the batter adjusting his body armor.

As a side note, it really made me nostalgic with all of the balls put into play.

Those days are gone
 

I remember when a starting pitcher would start 40 games, and complete 30 of them.

IMO, game times would be shortened considerably if MLB merely prohibited batters from adjusting their batting gloves between pitches. :)

I'm not even going to comment on the length of games, or any of the other numerous faults and issues I find with baseball today. Every time I do, I get torched like a cremation. So why bother? Suffice to say, I just enjoy my old cards, memorabilia, and old radio and TV broadcasts, and leave it at that...