Thursday, September 04, 2014
Time v Pace
Robert talks about the difference of time of game and pace of game. I've mentioned this before, but since this bugs me, I'll keep talking about it. First, a quote from a comedian hosting the Oscar's:
We've got a great two hour show for you tonight!... spread out over four hours
And that's really the issue here. One thing that I've come to love about the EXTRA dead time in baseball is this makes it easier for MLB Network to cut between games. I love the multi-games approach they give me, since I can't stand dead time. Nothing happening? Great, let's cut to another game!
Anyone who watches hockey in Olympics knows that the best day is when they show three games over 6 1/2 hours straight. (They didn't do that this year though.) It's the best viewing experience of the year, getting high quality play, all in a pretty compressed time period. They can do that though because it's only sixty seconds of commerical time instead of the two minutes in an NHL game. Indeed when I was growing up, there'd only be thirty seconds of commercial time. And none of those mandatory "TV timeouts" that is actually now part of the rules.
In any case, left to its own devices (i.e., it's ain't broke, don't fix it mentality), there's nothing stopping an MLB game from going to 3:15 or 3:30 or even four hours. If you like the pace of the Oscars, you'll love MLB.
As I noted a few months ago, since nothing is perfect, you have to decide, would you rather have the same amount of action with five more minutes of elapsed time, or five minutes less? Do you want your current 3:08 minute game to be 3:03 or 3:13? If you prefer 3:03, then would you prefer it be 3:08 or 2:58? If you prefer it be 2:58, would you prefer yada yada yada. You keep going through the exercise, and you'll settle on the "ideal" elapsed time, for a game that would otherwise take 3:08 minutes to play. I have to believe the real answer is somewhere between 2:00 and 2:30.
And while when I was a kid, I LOVED double-headers, I can't even imagine doing that today. But, give me a 1:30 - 2:00 game, and you can sign me up for triple-headers.
27 innings of baseball spread over six hours. Now, THAT would be a great show.?
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