Padecky: With no clock, baseball struggles to create more excitement

So now baseball is paying the price for demanding its participants perform the most difficult, challenging act in all of sports — hitting a pitched baseball. Nothing comes close.

A baseball hitter is a lock for the Hall of Fame if he’s successful 35% of the time (.350 average). Imagine Tom Brady completely only 35% of his passes. Tiger Woods has his golf ball on a tee. The basketball hoop isn’t moving when Steph Curry shoots. The soccer goal and the bowling pins don’t move. The tennis racket in the shape of a waffle iron neatly compensates for the speed of a serve.

Swinging a round bat at a round ball and trying to hit it square, then fair, then where no one is standing with a glove to catch it, well, no wonder the batter has three chances every time he’s at the plate.

Thus we have the troubling paradox that baseball is desperately and unsuccessfully trying to overcome. A 90-mile-an-hour fastball travels four-tenths of a second from the pitcher’s arm to the catcher’s mitt. That’s a blink of an eye. Waiting for water to boil holds our gaze longer than watching a pitch or, even, an at-bat.

So when someone yells the game is too slow, it’s actually moving too fast. I’ll let you grab that cup of coffee to ramp up.

Major League Baseball has tried everything except throwing the ball underhanded to create more offense. Well, almost everything.

Starting Aug. 3 in the independent Atlantic League — aka MLB’s test kitchen — the pitcher’s mound will be moved back a foot from its 60 feet, 6 inches. Two years ago, MLB thought of moving it 2 feet back, but the bounceback was too loud.

“God! Aw, come on,” said SSU baseball coach John Goelz, when told of the current idea. “Why not raise the hoop in the NBA because the guys are getting taller? Why not lengthen and widen the football field because the game is getting faster?”

Create more excitement in a sport? Want to see more offense? The NBA and the NFL don’t have to do the whimsies that Goelz offered. Rather, keep it simple, easy. Put a clock on it, a play clock in the NFL, a shot clock in the NBA. Both leagues responded to complaints their games were too slow.

The NCAA was even forced to do something in 1982. The NBA already had a 24-second shot clock in 1954. The NFL always had been on a clock, but in 1976 the league added a 30-second clock to speed up play.

Baseball’s answer to create more excitement? The designated hitter replaced the pitcher in the batting order. The American League adopted it. In 1973. The National League added the DH in 2020. When it comes to making the game more explosive, baseball acts in inverse proportion to the rest of American pro sports.

“The game has been notoriously slow,” Goelz said. “They did lower the mound in 1968.”

That was after St. Louis’ Bob Gibson looked like King Kong out there. Now everyone looks like King Kong. In 2019, MLB set a record for the 12th consecutive record-breaking year of strikeouts. Last year, strikeouts exceeded hits for the first time in MLB history.

“We got to do something to get more offense in the game,” said Jed Hoyer, the Chicago Cubs president of baseball operations, explaining why the mound is moving back a foot. “I don’t believe rules are written in stone.”

Now THAT is breaking news. Baseball’s rules seem to pre-date The Ten Commandments, which were written on stone. The distance of mound-to-plate was determined (ordered?) in 1893.

The pace of American life has quickened to where it feels like a fire drill. Every major sport has responded by timing its activity, an artificial boost. Basketball doesn’t need to be frenetic, nor does football. But Americans don’t like to take their time. Motion defines American life. Baseball once did.

“I was part of one of the greatest college baseball games ever played,” Goelz said.

That would be on May 26, 2008. It was a Division II NCAA playoff game, SSU versus Central Missouri. Yes, it was a classic. It took 19 innings.

“Every pitch was sudden death,” Goelz said.

That’s from a man who’s been in the game for over 40 years, who appreciates baseball for being complicated, a sport which demands patience. Goelz sat at the edge of his seat through a game that lasted 6 hours and 45 minutes, had 32 hits, 42 strikeouts. There were 149 plate appearances before it was over, almost the same number of the fans who remained in the stands before it was over (201). Yet, Goelz never lost interest.

That day, Goelz saw the clock as an innocent bystander. Had no influence. More of a curiosity, actually. It’s late. Oh well. This wasn’t the NFL or the NBA. He didn’t need a clock to hold his interest.

Goelz didn’t and doesn’t believe the link to excitement in baseball must be a clock, that when all else fails, watch the time, it’ll push an otherwise mediocre game forward with an artificial suspense.

The NFL felt the need to do it. So did the NBA. And soccer and men’s lacrosse and water polo. Heck, the World Series of Poker even has a clock. It’s become such a necessity in sport today that football coaches are judged as brilliant when they exhibit “great clock management.” Which means you’re good at wasting time. When you squeeze the seconds out of a game, when a coach slows the game down like that, it’s permitted. Only then is it acceptable to take your time in a football game.

Otherwise, tick, tick, tick. Push the ball up the court. Throw the pass out of bounds to stop the clock. Time is always the opponent to master.

Therein lies baseball’s challenge. A baseball coach can’t sit on the clock or run out the clock or use the clock to his advantage, because there is no clock. To contemplate? Deliberate? Cogitate? Let’s take a minute. That long? People will fall asleep!

So does all this actually say more about us than the game of baseball itself? That we don’t have time for anything?

To comment write to bobpadecky@gmail.com.