Baseball Is Dying

[jingram058]

Originally Posted by brass_rat

My understanding is that with the most recent pitch clock rules being tested this year, batters must be in the box ready to hit with 9 seconds left on the clock.

What would speed things up would be to cut 5 minutes of commercials every half inning. All the other stuff aside, that is how you speed the game up. But you can't do that, because you absolutely have to have the commercials.

I have close to 300 old radio broadcasts of complete games from the 1934 All-Star Game (oldest known to exist) up to the 1960s, and 114 TV broadcasts of complete games from games 6 and 7 of the 1952 World Series (oldest known to exist) up to today. Almost all the radio broadcasts are about 2 hours 30 minutes, + or -, with nothing cut out or edited, for 9 innings. The TV broadcasts are the same, until you get up into the 1970s, and then they start getting longer and longer due to numerous commercials.

Tinkering with the fundamental rules of baseball is not making the game better, in my humble opinion here. I do not know anyone, young or old, who like any of the rule changes, from 4-finger intentional walks to starting extra innings with a man on 2nd.

The only way to get games back to 2 hours and a half is to cut the commercials. But when Aaron Judge has to have $360 million (or more), it's not gonna happen.