A PITCH CLOCK LOVE AFFAIR: WHERE HAVE YOU BEEN ALL OUR BASEBALL LIVES?
Not since Flavor Flav has a timepiece made more entertainment impact, with Opening Day a celebration of faster games, streamlined pace and, yes, a few clock violations — a necessary evil in fixing MLB
The pitch clock is to baseball what ex-Lax is to constipation. Can we hug Theo Epstein, give him his own Cooperstown wing, for planting the seeds of long-overdue progress in a garden of weeds? A nine-inning game no longer crawls like a cement mixer, oblivious to 21st-century superhighways where football is a Bugatti La Voiture Noire and basketball is a Lamborghini Veneno.
Life is too short to suffer a pitcher who shakes off five signs and blows his nose on the infield grass. The average life expectancy in America — down to 76.4 years, shortest in two decades — no longer tolerates hitters who tuck in chains and scratch crotch regions. Baseball couldn’t have survived any more dawdling, its tepid commissioners allowing the average game time to slog from two hours and 30 minutes in the 1970s to a brain-draining 3:11 two years ago. Now, after a crisp and streamlined Opening Day that prompted not one yawn in my viewing space, there might be hope that games end before bedtimes, Gen Zers divert eyeballs from TikTok, and a beleaguered sport can introduce itself to a contemporary world.
“Love it,” Dodgers manager Dave Roberts said. “The players are adjusting to it, but just the rhythm of the game, the time of the game … all that is going to leave everyone wanting more the next day, and I think that's a good thing.”
They didn’t need 19 runs and four hours in the Bronx, where the Yankees have made a mockery of marathons. Nothing could have been more stirring for 46,000 fans, on a 39-degree afternoon, than a game that finished in 2:33 after Aaron Judge homered on his first 2023 swing and Gerrit Cole struck out 11 in a 5-0 party. Judge hit 62 home runs last year, the most of any presumed non-PED-user, and this season, he might be eyeing the 73 of juice-tainted Barry Bonds.
“Really?” manager Aaron Boone greeted him in the dugout.
Really. “I know very few followed up with 60,” Judge said. “A couple I know hit 50 after that. But we'll see what happens. Maybe we can make a new list. We'll see.”
So much for any pinstriped hangover after making history and signing a nine-year, $360 million contract and rejecting the Giants and Padres. “On so many levels, it’s a dream come true,” Judge said of his return to Yankee Stadium. “All in all, this is where I wanted to be. I’m happy I’m here. It’s tough to think about being anywhere else.”
See how fun baseball can be without needless dead time? Of Thursday’s 15 games, eight ended in 2:38 or less. Two others came in under 3:00. And only one — Blue Jays 10, Cardinals 9 in 3:38 — extended beyond the rock-bottom 3:11. Yes, there were pitch-clock violations, and weren’t they a howl? One impacted the outcome of a game: Boston’s Rafael Devers was kicking his cleats in the batter’s box and not looking at the pitcher, after taking a big swing, when strike three was called by umpire Lance Barksdale. A batter must be “attentive to the pitcher,” you see, even if he recently finalized an 11-year, $331 million extension. The blunder put the Red Sox in a one-out hole in the eighth inning, and they lost 10-9 to Baltimore after rallying in the ninth. “No excuses,” Boston manager Alex Cora said. “They know the rules.”
“It’s a new rule so we have to adapt,” Devers said through a translator. “In that situation, I’m not sure because the pitcher was not ready either. It was a tough situation, but the umpire made a decision and we have to respect it.”
Get used to complaints. Cubs right-handed Marcus Stroman became the first pitcher to commit a clock violation, yielding an automatic ball to Milwaukee’s Christian Yelich when umpire Ron Kulpa pointed to his wrist — a new sign of the times. “It’s tough, this pitch clock,” Stroman said in shiny black garb that channeled Dennis Rodman preparing for a Chicago night. “You got to be looking at the clock. You’re trying to worry about the pitch. You’re trying to worry about the guys on base. You’re trying to worry about your grip. It’s a big adjustment. I don’t think people realize it adds a whole other layer of thinking. It’s not easy to be a pitcher out there and feel rushed at times.” I know, life’s rough. But the hiccup didn’t bother Stroman, who pitched six innings in a 4-0 win. Similarly, Braves reliever Collin McHugh was flagged by ump Dan Bellino, but it was a footnote in a 7-2 victory.
Yes, because baseball players don’t like restrictions in an excruciating day-to-day profession that swallows all four calendar seasons, there will be flare-ups in critical moments. The best pitcher of his generation, Clayton Kershaw, doesn’t know how he’ll respond if an umpire penalizes him for taking too much time during an October game. “It's just gonna be more frustrating when there’s an infraction in a big moment,” he said. “You don't want playoff games, big important games down the stretch, decided by that. We don’t want any game decided by that. But I don't think we're gonna get any grace, so we’ve just got to figure it out.”
And Max Scherzer already is on the prowl, despite winning his first start with the new rules. “I love the pace. I don’t like the clock. I’ll double down on that,” he said. “I think the umpire should have discretion to turn the clock off.” Not happening, Mad Max. Deal with it.
Without the clock, of course, the pace wouldn’t be better. Not since rapper Flavor Flav, who wore household clocks around his neck, has a timepiece been so influential in popular culture. The playoffs are many months and dozens of games away. Let’s just be thankful the games are more watchable and more conducive to a modern lifestyle. For once, there is truth in advertising. Anxious to hype a 15-second timer for action to commence, or 20 seconds with a runner on base, and other dramatic changes — including a ban on infield shifts, larger bases and limits on pickoff throws — Major League Baseball trotted out actor Bryan Cranston. Not to sell crystal meth like Walter White, mind you, but to herald the lifting of a decades-long existential haze.
“This is the game we all want to see — get the ball, pitch the ball, keep the defense on their toes,” he says in a new commercial. “So get that shift outta here. Free up the players to put on a show!”
The ad concludes with a new slogan, a quarter-century after the steroids scandal ruined the “Chicks Dig The Long Ball” phase: “Three New Rules. More Great Action.” Part of the great action: Shohei Ohtani, poised to be the first $750 million ballplayer, embraced technological advancement and called his own pitches Thursday night via a PitchCom device under his jersey. He pitched six shutout innings and struck out 10 in a 2-1 Angels defeat that, not to be negative, already might have him pondering free agency. So much for the traditional catcher’s signs that enabled the Astros’ sign-stealing scandal. It’s Ohtani’s way of dealing with the pitch clock.
Still, faster pace and all, baseball must entertain to reclaim a bigger role in the American sports machinery. The question becomes whether its rhythms are monotonous — always centered on a pitch and a swing, a repetitive challenge that too often has ended in one of three inevitabilities: a strikeout, a walk or a home run. Last year, the MLB-wide batting average of .243 was the lowest since 1968. Imagine watching NFL games where quarterbacks completed only 25 percent of their passes, or NBA games where shooters converted one-fourth of their attempts. Pitch clock or not, baseball always will be baseball, and baseball never will be football, which has reached unprecedented heights in popularity and prosperity with perpetual action, raw physicality and resonant, multi-network marketing. Football is the ultimate TV sport and, thanks to a Supreme Court ruling that whipped open doors to legalized gambling, it’s the ultimate betting sport.
Baseball lost its grip on Americana in the ‘90s, when the overlords prioritized a labor impasse and allowed a World Series to be canceled. Meanwhile, the NFL and Michael Jordan were blowing past, never looking back. Desperate, the MLB owners looked the other way when sluggers were bloated on PEDs, complicit in the phony Home Run Derbies that purportedly reinvigorated the sport. Once the fans realized they were being duped by dope, baseball lost its way, no longer a must-watch as the average age of TV viewers pushed toward 60 while autumn ratings crashed to all-time lows. The issue isn’t whether the Pitch Clock Era can help MLB grow. It’s whether it helps MLB hold onto what it still has.
Nothing is wrong with being the No. 3 sport in a sports-crazed country. The takeaway, as another long season begins, is that baseball finally figured it out. The players were stubborn. The commissioner and the owners didn’t flex their muscles enough. Now we have an industry with more action and speed and fewer spreadsheets and analytics. Now we have a sport that monitors time.
Instead of wasting it.
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Jay Mariotti, called “without question the most impacting Chicago sportswriter of the past quarter-century,’’ writes general sports columns for Substack while appearing on some of the 1,678,498 podcasts and shows in production today. He is an accomplished columnist, TV panelist and talk/podcast host. Living in Los Angeles, he gravitated by osmosis to film projects.