No one has a problem with this, right?
I mean, we're all good --- everyone likes this and thinks it is one of the best things to happen to Major League Baseball in a long time, right?
At least I hope we can universally agree.
Because, looking at the pitch clock --- some call it a "pace clock" so as not to put the full onus on the pitcher --- that has been implemented in Spring Training, I simply cannot find one negative word to say. I love it and can't get enough of it.
Here's hoping that average time of game gets whacked down from over three hours to in the two-and-a-half-hour range once the season rolls around. And let's hope that's here to stay.
But I'll play ball with you for a moment here, because as with anything it hasn't been universal in opinion. I've heard the naysayers and the detractors blabbing and yattering about how baseball wasn't really made to be played this way.
Yep, I've read the few quotes and talked to some people who feel an artificial construct has been created wherein everything is moving too rapidly. They feel, and express, that a game we boasted about for so long as not having a clock is insincere and rushed along when you put a countdown board behind the plate to hustle it along.
It is too fast, they say. What's the rush?!?
Baseball historically doesn't have a quick pace and it needs to remain as such they burble.
I challenge anyone with such a thought process to do this: Go to YouTube. When you get to that vast video collection that has seemingly replaced the local library and can be dialed up right there in the comfort of your living room, punch up an old baseball game.
Pull one up from the 1980s.
Or grab one of those games where the Pirates and the Orioles did battle in the 1970s.
That's probably the best example.
In the 1971 World Series, the times of games were: 2:06, 2:55 (in an 11-3 game, mind you), 2:20, 2:48, 2:16, 2:59 and 2:10. Not one over three hours.
And don't just fixate on the times of the games if you watch one of those throwbacks, take notice of the true pacing. A pitch was thrown, the batter watched it go by, the catcher threw it back to the pitcher and --- wham --- we were ready to go again.
Just like that.
Not rushed, scurried or sprinted, but with a natural pacing that fit and felt right.
That's all this clock is doing. It isn't some big, bad revolution or new-fangled upheaval designed to push baseball into a new frontier.
It is actually the opposite.
It is simply resetting the game back to being played the way it is supposed to be played --- and because people couldn't do it themselves, now they need a monitoring device to get them there.
