Tresolini: Part of baseball's enduring appeal was no clock until the time came

Part of baseball’s timeless allure for those of us who grew up with it being, basically, the center of our athletic existence was that very adjective.

It truly was timeless.

There was always something pleasing and quite pastoral about that.

Baseball was bucolic, played at an unhurried pace governed only by the setting of the spring or summer sun or mom summoning for supper.

To commit a clock to such a delightful endeavor was sacrilegious. The ticking of time was the burden foisted upon all those other, lesser, sports.

But times, as the saying suggests, change.

Major League Baseball’s 2023 season began Thursday with timers ticking in 15 stadiums, including old stalwarts Fenway Park and Wrigley Field, where the ghosts of seasons past must have been startled at the sight.

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As cringe worthy as that is, it’s a historic alteration and the evolutionary consequence of other factors that made big-league games way too long. They averaged at least three hours in length each of the last 11 years, topped by 3 hours and 11 minutes in 2021.

That’s even slow for a marathon.

They’d been creeping toward 3 hours after first cracking 2:45 – and never going back below that -- in 1986.

Numerous pitching changes and increased television coverage of games, necessitating longer commercial breaks, were among the culprits. Teams averaged 4.3 pitchers per game in 2022. That number had not gotten as high as 3.0 until 1990 or reached 4.0 until 2015.

Both pitchers and batters also developed a tendency to putz around, wasting time while they fiddled with their equipment and their uniforms. With an ode to the classic baseball film “Bull Durham,” we all know what that made them.

Lollygaggers, exactly.

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All that likely contributed to per-game MLB attendance, which topped out in 2007 at 32,696, dwindling to 28,203 in 2019 and 26,566 in 2022, with COVID-19 still having a slight impact.

With the new rules, players must "adjust habits that were formed over decades," Morgan Sword, MLB's executive vice president for baseball operations, said during Thursday's telecast of the Giants-Yankees game.

"This looks a lot more like the game did a couple of decades ago," he added of the improved pace of play.

MLB had already taken action to address game length by limiting mound visits and requiring relievers to face a minimum of three batters or pitch until the end of their half-inning.

But what was instituted this year, a clock requiring a pitch within 15 seconds when the bases are empty and 20 seconds with runners on base, is a colossal alteration to baseball’s inherently deliberate tempo.

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Hitters also are under a new measurement standard, required to be set in the batter’s box with :08 on the clock. Violations result in a ball against the pitcher or a strike against the batter, a fate that befell Baltimore's Austin Hayes Thursday when he wasn't set in time for Boston reliever Ryan Brasier's first pitch of the at-bat.

Some may recoil at the sight of those timers, a sacred insult to a game measured only by the wonderful unpredictability of innings.

But if the clock achieves the desired result of considerably decreasing the length of games, as it has in minor-league trials and in spring training -- when games went from an average of 3:01 in 2022 to 2:35 this year – it’ll gain advocates.

Time, of course, will tell.

Other tweaks – bigger bases, fewer pick-off attempts and the elimination of the shift – were also aimed at improving the game’s appeal. Left-handed hitters who regularly seemed to be lining out to second basemen stationed in shallow right field are especially grateful.

History always hovers over baseball. It, therefore, seemed proper Thursday that home-plate umpire Laz Diaz took time to dust off home plate at Yankee Stadium so Aaron Judge, who smacked an American League record 62 home runs last year, could soak in the acclaim from fans while not infringing on the new rules as he arrived for his first at-bat.

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Judge promptly lined Logan Webb’s second pitch over the center-field fence for his first career opening day home run. The Yankees eventually prevailed 5-0 in a tidy 2 hours and 33 minutes.

They didn’t show the pitch clock on the MLB Network’s telecast of that game. On the two MASN stations, airing the Braves-Nationals opener in Washington and Orioles-Red Sox in Boston, it was viewable with the score and pitch-count graphic in the upper left corner of the screen.

It was different, yes, a little odd to see. We’ll get used to it. But there was a noticeable sense of urgency before each pitch as that clocked ticked.

For our National Pastime, on the grand occasion that is Opening Day, the time had probably come.

Have an idea for a compelling local sports story or is there an issue that needs public scrutiny? Contact Kevin Tresolini at ktresolini@delawareonline.com and follow on Twitter @kevintresolini. Support local journalism by subscribing to delawareonline.com.

This article originally appeared on Delaware News Journal: Baseball has historic change as MLB begins season with pitch clock