

Why do baseball games take so long? - smacktoward
http://www.bostonglobe.com/sports/2013/06/08/why-baseball-games-take-long/wikaeRMGatBDGDefpbFE1H/story.html

======
spodek
Since people are mentioning other sports, for an analytical study on golf's
pace of play, see Golf's Pace of Play Bible, by the founder of the three/45
Golf Association --
[http://www.three45golf.org/?r=no](http://www.three45golf.org/?r=no) \-- and a
colleague at Columbia Business School. They found that studies showed that the
current slow pace of play is the biggest obstacle to enjoying and growing the
game. They analyzed golf's play with business operations analytics, like
queueing theory.

I thought people liked to play golf to relax, but waiting for others isn't
relaxing. It turns out that speeding the game through a few changes improves
the experience for everyone -- not just players, but the club as well. They
talk about principles everyone can do to improve the pace.

------
skywhopper
Though my wife says she'd be happier to go to games if they were just about
six innings long, I don't mind. I enjoy the atmosphere, particularly at
Wrigley Field where there's no attempt to keep everyone distracted every
second with per-player at-bat song themes and audience participation games
during every inning break. The game is designed to be deliberately paced and
reflective. Enjoy it for what it is. Pitching and hitting will ebb and flow as
it always has. Strategies will change. But the pace is fine.

------
ageofwant
Also American made "documentaries".

I cannot watch a doco made by Americans, its infuriating. Maybe 13 minutes 9
seconds worth of content stretched over 55 minutes of excruciatingly repeated
cut scenes of the same damn clip over and over and over again. I once made a
point of counting them. The same content, exactly the same footage shown 6
times, I quit watching about then.

Now compare that to anything by David Attenborough.

------
MarcScott
Baseball seems very fast paced when compared to cricket, a game that can
stretch over 5 days with routine breaks for lunch and tea.

~~~
klackerz
Tests match have become more and more rare though with the increase in twenty-
twenty matches.

~~~
ageofwant
And a damn shame that is, I say ! Not that I disapprove of 20/20's mind, but
they should not come at the cost of proper tests.

------
mihaifm
same of this stuff applies to tennis as well...there's too much time spend
between serves with all the little habits each player has, or using towel
etc., plus the break every two games !? It's hard to even consider watching a
full 5 set game.

------
Pxtl
Refreshing to hear somebody talking about _too much_ dead space filling
entertainment. Contrast vs reality-TV and game shows where the pace is
deliberately dragged down to a crawl.

------
w1ntermute
Football is a much worse offender. The amount of time spent waiting around
just goes to show how it was perfectly made to generate TV advertising
revenue.

~~~
adanto6840
With TV timeouts, sure. But generally this seems mitigated in football IMO --
the combination of:

A) the play clock (requiring the offense to start their next play quickly)
and;

B) the fact that every single play has one or more players interacting with
the ball, and some sort of an outcome from it.

Football has a methodical pace similar to baseball, but the biggest difference
IMO is that in baseball a high percentage of "plays" (pitches in this context)
don't actually result in any "action" and instead are just a ball or a strike.

