I am video editor by trade. Been editing for over thirty years and thus I think I have a fairly good pulse on the attention span of the viewing public. In those thirty years I have seen the “edit” to be a great barometer on how long the general public can look at one thing , be it a close up of an interview or a slow pan. So how does this speak to the obsession that the high gods of baseball fervently debate regarding reducing the time of games in the midst of the rules, traditions and strategy that have gone fairly unchecked for the last 150 years ago.
What we are in the midst of is challenging the patience of our “modern” action-obsessed brain that checks our cellphones fourteen times an hour with the stoicism of watching a dazzling twenty-three pitch at bat or waiting on a pitcher with a rosin bag fetish and can not get his pitch off in the allotted twenty seconds.
“Baseball is baseball. You’re not going to speed it up. You’re not going to change it. You can put the pitch clock there. The game is going to flow the way the game flows.
“If you have a 6–5 game, it’s going to be 3½ hours. If you have a 2–1 game, it’s going to be 2:50. We have to get over the whole mindset of changing the pace of play as opposed to the product on the field.”
That’s Jon Lester, recently quoted in the Chicago Tribune. Brilliant. Absolutely spot on.
Here are the numbers. The average time of a game is now 3 hours, down 8 minutes from the year before but longer than the first “Godfather” film by two minutes and thirty minutes longer than games were in 1979.
So what?
Lately I’ve been watching more and more NBA basketball. I kind of checked out for twenty odd years and despite the Barkley’s and Duncan’s didn’t really miss all that much. But goodness, what a product the NBA has. Skill, scoring, feats by majestic athletes doing unimaginable things. Every other guy moves like Dr. J and the 3-pointer has played perfectly into the attention challenged populace who get to see a shot launched well before the ball the need to work it down low to the big man. Hell, the big men are evening launching these days. And at a tidy 2:14 a game it is digestible to the fan attending and watching on ye olde idiot box. Baseball can’t compete on any level with that.
Regarding football. Now football comes in at over three hours, but it’s only once a week and despite its mere eleven minutes of action per game fans feast on those concussive moans and artful connections between sculpted and speedy wide-outs and quarterbacks — effectively drawing on our ancient mammalian brain tapping seamlessly into the animated Americana concoction of speed, violence and entertainment.
Baseball has never been able to compete on a frenetic entertainment level with either of the major two sports. It’s a strange American pastime. Past time is apt in that it represents very little of what drives this hyperactive nation currently.
The game is not designed for instant gratification. Hell, the season starts in February and goes on and on and on…162 days a year until the Halloween masks inevitably come out on the final games of the fall classic. The season is remarkably long on a daily basis and it’s insanely wonderful to have the drone of the broadcaster as my background world during those long stretch of months.
As for the daily games let the games go on for as long as they need to. Forget a pitch clock or putting a guy on 2nd in the 10th inning. The spirituality of the game is directly linked to the infinite realm. There is no rule that a game must ever end. How beautiful and scary for those of us who need quick “results” .
With this in mind, games are meditations to savor but also withstand…like sitting cross-legged in Zazen, knowing it’s the right thing to do but god your legs are killing you and you wish it would be over soon. Yes, that is what baseball is these days. I admit it. It’s my favorite sport but god it can boring as hell. But that’s my issue not baseball’s.
The variables that exist in a given game or play, many now based on analytics, place more strategic importance on behavioral models which means more players and consultations and figuring out where and who to play, etc. There are so many things to consider and that all takes time and patience.
Thus the game challenges us to sit with it and be. So put down your phone, grab a beer, and let the sounds of spring, summer and fall sink into your being — and reconnect with the great game.
