This year’s World Series between the Kansas City Royals and San Francisco Giants may set a record for drowsiness – at least for television fans.
Games start after 8 p.m. and that means watching the Boys of October playing nearly until themidnight hour. The Giants won Game One, 7-1, and it took 3 hours and 32 minutes. The Royals bounced back in Game Two, 7-2, in 3 hours and 25 minutes.
Forget steroids, the next big baseball scandal may involve couch potato fans overdosing on caffeine to stay awake.
“These games start too late and end too late,” said Stu Sachs, a lifelong baseball fan who lives in The Villages. “Baseball has got to do something about it.”
During this season, the average big league game lasted 3 hours and 3 minutes. But in the post season, the nine-inning game jumped to 3 hours and 31 minutes, according to STATS.
Things got so bad in St. Louis, that Red Schoendienst, the 91-year old former second baseman and manger of the Cardinals, was having trouble lasting through the team’s playoff games.
“It’s past my bedtime,” he told the AP.
Baseball Commissioner Bud Selig has said a committee will “look to decrease the time of games in 2015 and beyond.” We’ll believe it when we see it.
Why the marathon games?
Playoffs and World Series contests mean added television revenue and commercials. Then comes the pitching changes, batters wasting time between pitches; interviews in the stands and ceaseless network chatter. Field reporter Erin Andrews seems to get more camera time than the Giants’ Hunter Pence or the Royals’ Omar Infante.
When I was kid World Series games started in the afternoon and lasted roughly 2 hours. That was plenty of time for Mickey Mantle, Sandy Koufax, Bob Gibson, Whitey Ford and Willie Mays.
Today, watching a game is an endurance contest, and most kids are fast asleep on a school night when the World Series’ game comes to an end. The irony is that these games were moved to nighttime to provide more people an opportunity to watch. That’s where the big television ratings belong – in prime time.
But prime time ends at 11 o’clock and most games are still going strong, while much of the TV audience is nodding off.
I confess: I haven’t watched all nine innings of a World Series game since Ronald Reagan was president.
It’s not just baseball which faces this game-time dilemma. The National Basketball Association recently experimented with a 44-minute exhibition game, instead of the usual 48-minutes.
An average NBA game lasts nearly 2 hours and 30 minutes. The 44-minute exhibition game lasted 1 hour and 58 minutes. The shorter game time meant two less commercial breaks.
The National Football League is also testing the patience of television fans. Today’s games feature incessant replays, officials’ conferences and countless commercials. The Wall Street Journal has reported that commercials take up nearly an hour for every game telecast. The last two minutes of an NFL contest can last for what seems to be an eternity.
It’s time for the major sports, especially baseball, to get on the clock and make it faster.
George Yankowski, 91, lives in The Villages and played in the major leagues back in the 1940s. He has seen just about everything the game has offer, but now finds it a challenge to last from the opening pitch to the last out.
“I love baseball,” he said, “but the games are just too long.”
The message is clear: if baseball doesn’t do something to speed things up, it may find itself running out of time.
Tony Violanti writes for Villages-News.com. You can reach him at tonyviolanti@villages-news.com
