Fixing Baseball, Part IV: Speeding Up This Damn Game

"You can't call a strike on Henderson," Ned Martin once observed. It was a good-natured shot at (then young) Rickey Henderson's habit of dramatically stepping out of the batter's box when a ball he didn't swing at was called a strike.

Nowadays we call that plate discipline.

There is apparently some concern that baseball games are too long. Bill Simmons has adopted the cause, and perhaps others, and it seems to be getting some traction. Larry Lucchino told WEEI that minor league players are already not allowed to step out of the box during their at-bats. He also said there are discussions at the MLB level about the length of games.

I feel like pitchers are the problem. Some of them greet the ball like it's a kid away at college, and whenever it comes back they have to make its favorite meal and do its laundry before they throw it again. The hitter, meanwhile, has to be prepared to react to something coming in at 90 MPH. How long can they reasonably be expected to stand there at full tension?

Would Nomar have been Nomar without his batting glove ritual? What about Derek Jeter, who practically calls timeout by raising his hand while he winds into position? The question answers itself: we notice the quirks of these guys because we like to watch them hit. Nobody ever wanted to watch a pitcher hold the ball (with the grand exception of Mark Fidrych).

I'd like to see if a rule against stepping outside the box has an effect. If it really does shorten games, then it would be worth trying. MLB could also consider limiting throws to first to hold the runner, or even getting really heretical and limiting pitching changes (say, to a minimum of three batters) or allowing intentional walks to be done via a wave rather than throwing four pitches.

I also question the premise of the discussion. Yes, games are too long, at this moment, but I think the problem might fix itself. The tweaks we could talk about, like warnings from umpires, might come back to haunt us. I'm a big Simmons fan, but he works constantly and has two kids, so it's just possible that he's become less patient with baseball. Which is not to say he's wrong to bring it up -- in the Internet era, when things like popup ads can seem like interminable interruptions, baseball has to think about this.

But it's still the only sport without a clock. And that is a good thing.