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PLAY BALL!
Have baseball games become too long? April 1998 |
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Listen to a RealAudio version of this interview.
Read the additional comments to this forum.
NewsHour Backgrounders:
March 31, 1998
A look at the new kind of corporate baseball owners and the effects they are having on baseball.
March 31, 1998
The Minnesota Twins demand a stadium.
October 17, 1997
Doris Kearns Goodwin shares her baseball memories.
October 24, 1996
The ups and downs of the 1996 baseball season.
OUTSIDE LINK
The official site for Major League Baseball
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: We're here with Frank DeFord, senior contributing writer for Sports Illustrated and commentator for NPR. Mr. DeFord, welcome to the Online NewsHour. FRANK DeFORD: Hello!
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: We received a lot of questions. One of the first ones was from Darrel Anderson of Port St. Lucie, Florida, and he wrote: "if you think the game of baseball was too long, then you might think that life was too long." Do you agree? Does it have to speed up?
"God gave life, but He didn't make baseball. It's up to us to manipulate baseball better to our advantage."
FRANK DeFORD: Yes. Baseball does need to speed up. And just because a life can be long and rich doesn't mean every baseball game is going to be long and rich. And God gave life, but He didn't make baseball. It's up to us to manipulate baseball better to our advantage.
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: There's a new set of guidelines including: asking a pitcher to speed up once a batter is in the box and limiting the freedom of a batter to step out of the box. Will these rules work?
FRANK DeFORD: Well, they should work. In every other sport, when they create rules and the rules are followed. The one in basketball said you have to shoot in 24 seconds. And that was the rule. You had to shoot in 24 seconds. But baseball doesn't do a very good job of making sure that its rules are followed. It doesn't enforce its rules. So I have no way of knowing whether baseball is serious about enforcing the rules this time, because there have been a lot of rules on the books about speeding the game up and they have not paid any attention to, in the same way the umpires don't pay any attention to what the strike zone is supposed to be.
If the umpires don't pay attention to what the strike zone is going to be, why should they pay any attention to what the clock says. And the umpires are, after all, the ones who are supposed to enforce it. So I think we're going to have to just wait and see. There's no way of knowing.
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: What are the motivations for shortening the game? One reason for shortening the game--one of our viewers wrote in [Jessie Mayors of Villanova, PA] saying that she thought it was big money and the television contracts. Do you think that played a role?
"If anything, television has lengthened the game."
FRANK DeFORD: I think, if anything, television has lengthened the game because they placed more time between innings to make sure that they could get more commercials in, and there's been a tendency for players to sort of preen more, to show off more because they know the television cameras are on them. And so, far from speeding up games, television has gone in the other direction. I think the
reason that baseball should be speeded up is because it's a better show. It's better for everybody. It's better for the fans, and ultimately it's better for television, yes, because if we enjoy something more, we're going to watch more television.
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: And do you think the concern about attracting a younger generation of fans is working here?
FRANK DeFORD: I don't think there's any question that that applies here. But as one knows, younger people tend to have a somewhat quicker attention span. But by the same token, I'm not a younger person, unfortunately, and I'd like to see the game speed up. I don't think this is like a concession to younger kids, a sellout to younger people.
People go to a game to see it played expeditiously. That doesn't mean bu-bu-bu-bu-bu, everything has to be done rat a tat tat. But it should be done in its own good time. And baseball has gotten--I think the problem with baseball is it's really almost sort of macho about, well, we don't have a clock, we don't need to, we're timeless. And sure it's distinguished by the fact that it doesn't have a clock, but it's also true that it's not about when baseball was truly the national pastime--the games were played a whole lot faster than they are now. It's not like we're saying let's change baseball. We're saying let's put baseball back to when it was best.
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: So what happened? Why did it become longer?
FRANK DeFORD: I think it was a question of drips and drabs. That slowly, slowly, it just got longer and longer. There are some things you can say--like more players--there were more pitchers and obviously, and more pinch hitters. And all of that takes a little bit more time. Then the umpires started calling a much shorter strike zone. So it made everybody be a little bit more precise, and there was more balls thrown. And so I don't think that it's been any one particular factor. I think it's been a whole lot of them. These are all internal factors. I mean, you throw the external factor of television on top of it, and suddenly you've added an hour to the length of a two-hour game. And that's basically what's happened over time.
What will happen to the designated hitter?
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: In the papers recently they've been reporting that the major league baseball owners are getting together and talking about eliminating the designated hitter. Could you explain the role of designated hitter in the game and why it might be the reason for some of the delays.
FRANK DeFORD: The designated hitter was introduced about 30 years ago into baseball, the idea being that pitchers don't hit very well, so, therefore, we will remove the pitcher from the batting line-up and put a specialist in who can hit. It's akin in some extent in football in bringing in a specialist in to kick the extra points or to kick the field goals. But obviously, anybody knew that a designated hitter would get more hits than a pitcher. I mean, that was the point of it, and it was easy to see that that was what was going to result, but of course, when you get more hits, it means a longer game and it means because there are more hits over the course of a season, you're going to have more pitchers brought in. And it's simply going to take longer. That whole other argument about designated hitter is whether it's right in terms of the purity of the game. That's something else again. That has to be decided on its own merits. But there's no question if you want to shorten the game one way you can do it is to eliminate a designated hitter.
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: Do you think that would ever happen? That's been talked before, and it hasn't happened.
"If they could get the Catholics and Protestants in Northern England to agree on something, they surely--they can get baseball people to agree on the designated hitter up or down."
FRANK DeFORD: I think they're probably closer to eliminating the designated hitter now then than they have been in a long, long time. It's pretty ridiculous. Having the designated hitter in one league--one major league--the American and not in the other--I mean, that just simply doesn't make any sense. It would be the same as playing, you know, twelve men in the American Football Conference and eleven men in the National Football Conference. I mean, I think most people feel right now--most baseball fans either prefer the designated hitter, or they prefer the old way. I think all of them would agree, hey, let's do one or the other, and hey, if they could get the Catholics and Protestants in Northern Ireland to agree on something, they surely--they can get baseball people to agree on the designated hitter, up or down.
ONLINE NEWSHOUR: If you were to shorten the game of baseball, how would you do it?
FRANK DeFORD: Two main ways you do it -- are number one, you have umpires call a larger strike zone. Not asking them to do anything new, just asking him to follow the rules. And number two, you apply the time clock. That's the way you do it. I think there are other ways you--subsidiary ways that you could speed up--like for example, eliminating the designated hitter--but cutting down a little bit on time between innings, stuff like that. But the main way is to call the strike zone the way it was created and to enforce the rule about how long you've got between pitches.
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