If it’s high-school baseball season, get ready for some agonizingly long seven-inning games, sometimes lasting upwards of three hours.
For a variety of seasons, high-school baseball games, which consist of seven innings, have become increasing longer in recent years. In theory, a seven-inning contest should take 90 minutes to two hours.
But that doesn’t happen much anymore, unfortunately. Often two hours have passed and a game is still in only the fourth or fifth inning.
And there is no sense of urgency, or even an attempt, to fix the lagging issue. It’s almost like the long games have been accepted as the norm.
Many are at fault for the lagging gametime, players, coaches and umpires. Pitchers have become too deliberate, taking too long to throw a pitch. Batters are allowed to step out of the batter’s box way too often. How about only one step out allowed per each at-bat?
There are too many conferences between the third-base coach and hitters.
In the change overs, instead of immediately sprinting to their positions after the third out and being ready to play, the team taking the field pauses for a huddle and conference in front of its dugout for sometimes a half minute.
Sometimes pitchers have to wait to throw warmup pitches because there is no catcher ready and in position.
This all adds time to games. Basically, there is waaaaaaay too much extended downtime in high-school baseball these days, making the games not nearly as fun to watch.
– Dave Facinoli
dfacinoli@sungazette.net