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Kissing Your Sister
Okay, so about this latest round of pace-of-game tweaks just announced for MiLB…
The only clock that baseball needs is the old relic on the original scoreboard at Wrigley Field, circa Flintstones. It’ll be interesting to see to what extent the shortened pitch clock is enforced this season at Principal Park here in Des Moines. I don’t recall the previous one ever being invoked. Whenever it seems in danger of expiring before the pitch is thrown, it just goes blank, in my experience. More like a suggestion or a reminder than a hard and fast rule.
But this extra inning expediter they’ve come up with? I’ve got a better idea.
It’s just the minor leagues, right, where winning is still better than losing, but not as paramount a concern as player development. Just as player conditioning is the primary objective in spring training, as opposed to the Cactus or Grapefruit League pennant.
Ties are permitted in exhibition games (with the notable exception forevermore of the big league ASG). Why not call it a draw in the bush leagues too, if the score is knotted after nine?
I can think of one occasion when that would have been especially convenient for our family.
It was the 4th of July and the main attraction at that evening’s I-Cub game was the postgame fireworks display. The boys were squirts. Going into the top of the 9th the home team had a comfortable lead. Bring on the pyrotechnics! Two up, two down. Here we go. Routine grounder to short, clean pickup, hop/skip/throw and – whoa, over the first baseman’s head! Floodgates opened. The visitors tied it up. On to the 10th, 11th, 12th, 13th…the crowd, an overflow one when the game began, steadily dwindled. We finally gave up near midnight and called it a night.
Who won? Who cared? Nobody who came in through the turnstiles.
That was a personal exception to the general rule that there aren’t many places I’d rather be than at a ballpark. The playoffs in particular do get tedious on TV, but still…leave fast enough alone, baseball, and try selling the pace as a plus.
What’s everybody’s hurry?
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