Sports that Mattes

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig is suddenly worried about the "slow pace of baseball games." Really, Bud? Would you feel the same way if long-time umpire, Joe West, didn't issue those very same remarks last week about the "slow-pace" of the Red Sox/Yankee matchups? I doubt it. And if this new "problem" suddenly becomes a huge issue in the media, Selig is going to have nobody to blame but himself. He could have easily dismissed West's comments as nothing more than opinion, but instead he just added fuel to an unnecessarily ignited fire.

Baseball is a slow game, period. If you can't seem to deal with that, then don't watch. I happen to enjoy unwinding after a long day of class by watching my beloved Boston Red Sox for a few hours each night. It's relaxing, it's enjoyable and it allows me to help take my mind off of all the other rigors of daily college life. Sure a typical baseball game can take anywhere between three and four hours, but it is not like this is a new discovery.

It also seems rather ironic that Selig would issue such statements after deciding to implement the use of instant replay for the first time ever last season. Granted, the rule is that instant replay is only allowed to be used for determining home run calls, but does it not add more time to an already "slow" game?

There are some minor instances during a baseball game that can affect its pace and duration. But I don't feel as though these little player idiosyncrasies (such as mound meetings or calling timeouts during an at bat) are a prominent issue, and they certainly do not have a significant effect on the overall length of a baseball game. They are mostly just annoying habits that make you roll your eyes a few times, but are quickly forgotten about after the very next play. It is only when these "habits" become excessive, such as when Jorge Posada called a time-out eight times during one inning to visit C.C. Sabathia at the mound on opening night, that we see an unnecessary extension of the game.

While Selig claimed that he was not necessarily concerned with the overall pace of the majority of baseball games, he stated that it becomes an issue when pitchers take too long between pitches or when batters take too many time-outs during an at bat. That's interesting, are those not the exact same complaints that spewed out of West's mouth last week? Yet Selig said that he did not want to address West's comments "directly" (even though this is exactly what he did, in my opinion), and he also told reporters that baseball is now "looking at ways to keep the game moving."

Come on, Bud. How are you seriously going to do that? Some have suggested limiting the amount of allowable mound visits between players during a game, even though there is already a rule that limits managers to one mound visit per inning before the pitcher has to be removed from the game for good. Bud's suggestion raises a lot of questions.

How would the MLB possibly implement a rule pertaining to the time a pitcher takes to throw between each pitch? Is there going to be some type of "pitch-clock" implemented that starts immediately after a ball reaches the plate; much like a shot-clock in basketball? How would a pitcher be penalized for such a violation? Would an automatic ball be added to the pitch count? Or would it be more of a warning where he would need to hit the showers after continuous violations? Believe me, I realize how ridiculous these ideas are sounding, and that is the point that I am trying to make. Unless Selig somehow surprises me with some brilliant scheme to deal with these "problems," I don't see any pragmatic solutions.

I'm not trying to cause a firestorm of debate over the issue with this article. I'm actually trying to show how ridiculous it is that this "problem" may suddenly become the focus of a mass media ongoing saga for the next few months until the MLB creates and implement some needless rule to help change the game's supposedly unbearable pace. It will all just be needless bickering and bantering that would not serve baseball well after quite a few years of negative publicity due to performance-enhancing drugs. Let's just hope all this negative PR doesn't come back to bite ol' Buddy boy in the behind, because honestly, he and the game can certainly use a break after an almost decade-long soap opera surrounding performance enhancing drugs and Congressional investigations.

Baseball is a slow game, my friends, hence why it is called America's favorite "pastime."