Baseball no longer the timeless game as pitch clock shaves 30 minutes off 9-inning game
Experts say new rules bring the 150-year-old sport in line with the times
Major League Baseball has hit a home run it appears. A series of rule changes have pumped much-needed life back into the game and produced a product that analysts say make the game vastly more enjoyable and watchable for both casual and diehard fans.
After years of swings and misses, baseball just might have got it right this time.
"It got to the point where it was important to intervene and make sure that we are putting the best product on the field," Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred said prior to this season, which began March 30. "Our research showed that the game had evolved and changed in a way that fans didn't like, and we decided it was time to intervene."
The changes, which include a pitch clock, bigger bases and rules on where infielders can be positioned, were put in place to boost offence and reduce the length of games, which routinely dragged past the three-hour mark.
Many longtime baseball watchers say the alterations were long overdue.
"Most people under 40 years old were saying that the game was boring and didn't appeal to them. So I think these changes which are big and abrupt were a long time in coming," said Tom Zeiller, a professor at the University of Colorado who has studied and written extensively about the evolution of baseball in America.
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Zeiler said even though baseball has long been referred to as America's pastime, the game had become out of sync with the expectations and desires of the North American sports fan.
"Baseball is inherently boring, and I'm a baseball fan," he said. "It doesn't have contact or violence. It really doesn't relate as much to contemporary America or contemporary Canada as other sports do."
The University of Windsor's Craig Greenham, a longtime chronicler and fan of the sport, said baseball's decades-long quest to attract and grow a new generation of baseball fans and boost sagging television ratings required the drastic change that these new rules deliver.
"If we want a younger audience to rejuvenate the game, we have to make it fan friendly. And the relaxed pace of the game wasn't always something that kept the attention span of younger fans," Greenham said. "The fandom is aging and something needed to be done. This is a proper, appropriate medicine for a sport that has sort of hit the skids."
Games reduced by 30 minutes
There has been an immediate impact through the first two weeks of the season, according to data released by MLB. The length of a nine-inning game is shorter by 30 minutes, down to two hours and 37 minutes. That's 81 hours over the course of a 162-game schedule.
There are also more runs being scored and more balls in play. The league-wide batting average has jumped nearly 20 points from .230 to .250.
After initially being maligned by baseball purists for messing with the integrity of the game, there is almost universal agreement among players and fans that the changes have resulted in a snappier version of the 150-year-old game.
"This is a very fan-friendly revolution, or evolution, I suppose," Greenham said. "And so much as the games are shorter, they're more action-packed. There's a level of dynamism that we haven't seen in years."
"It's still a game with no clock in the sense that the end of the game isn't determined by any timing," Manfred said when the rules were announced. "The game ends naturally, just like it always has, and I see the pitch timer as sort of a small change to move things along."
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And after some early season speed bumps, players and fans have adapted quickly to the new rules, the most drastic being the pitch clock. It is set at 15 seconds (20 seconds if there is a runner on base) and has become an on-screen feature of most broadcasts. Batters are required to be ready to hit when the clock hits eight seconds and the ball must be pitched before the clock expires. A violation results in a strike for the batter or a ball for the pitcher.
An irony around the "new" pitch clock rule is that it's actually one of the oldest rules in the game. Lou Schiif, a Florida judge and co-author of the book Baseball and the Law, says a version of the pitch clock rule has been on the books since 1901 but has gone unenforced.
Change a part of baseball
Schiff says change in baseball has been part of the fabric of the sport that has seen it drastically transform since its inception. For example, there was a time when a batter hit by a ball wasn't granted first base, or a pitcher could spit on a ball to affect the spin, some of the many things now be unthinkable in modern baseball.
Schiff says all sports evolve and change to suit the times they are played. Basketball instituted a shot clock and the three-point line, staples of the modern game. Hockey instituted rules to encourage offence and make the game more exciting. Football liberated the forward pass by putting in place rules that limited defensive contact with receivers down the field.
All of these rules have improved the game for fans while maintaining the core virtues of what popularized these sports in the first place.
"With these new rules you are still seeing the same amount of baseball," Schiff told CBC. "You're still seeing the same number of pitches. There's still nine innings and three outs. You're still seeing it all. But without all of the time wasting."
