How long is too long for a ball game?

I recently had reason to go scouring the Internet for a baseball box score for the first ball game I ever went to live – a 1979 battle with the New York Yankees visiting Chicago to play the White Sox.
 

One-time White Sox pitcher Ken Kravec ...

It amazes me the amount of detail I do recall, such as eventual Hall of Fame pitcher Jim Hunter getting knocked out by the Sox within two innings (he went on to retire from the game following that season), a hard-hit line drive double by Reggie Jackson that I still recall as the hardest-hit ball I have ever seen.

AND A GRAND slam home run by Jay Johnstone of the Yankees that ultimately gave the Bronx Bombers an 8-5 victory over the ball club that was two years removed from being the South Side Hit Men.

So what’s of interest in a ballgame played some 38 seasons ago between ball clubs that finished in fifth and fourth place (Chicago and New York, respectively) in their divisions – the World Series that year involved “the Family” of Pittsburgh beating on the Baltimore Orioles?

What caught my attention was a tiny little detail at the end of the box score – listed down there with the attendance (a near-capacity crowd of 43,373 tickets sold) and the umpires for the game.

It was 2:19. That’s not a biblical verse. It’s the amount of time it took to play nine full innings of baseball on a sunny, but chilly, day in April of ’79.

... took on Hall of Famer Hunter many years ago

I’M PLANNING ON going to the White Sox game to be played Thursday night against the Yankees, and about the only thing I’m sure of is that when we’re two hours into the game, we’re not going to be anywhere close to being finished. Tuesday night’s White Sox 4-3 victory over the Yankees took 3 hours, 25 minutes to play.

Major League Baseball games may have managed to cut themselves down a little bit from the 2014 game length average of 3 hours, 8 minutes (last year, games averaged 3 hours, 26 seconds each).

But I’m going to be honest; I don’t recall anything significantly brief or prompt about that first game all those years ago. We have managed to drag down the pace of play to the point where many people have been lulled into thinking what we have now is somehow normal.

Foley achieved highlight in promptly-played game

I also found it odd the way that when the White Sox paid tribute a week ago to now-retired pitcher Mark Buehrle, several people went out of their way to offer up their praise for the way he used to be capable of pitching efficiently to the point where his games could last ONLY two-and-a-half hours on average.

IN SHORT, BUEHRLE would have been the norm back when I was a kid. Now, he gets great praise for doing what everyone used to be capable of doing. It also helped to reinforce the point that when Comcast Sports Chicago chose to rebroadcast the 2009 no-hit perfect game Buehrle pitched against the Tampa Bay Rays, the total broadcast took barely over two hours to complete.

I’ll be honest – the current pace of play is such that around 10 p.m. Thursday night, I’m going to be thinking seriously about whether I need to leave the ballgame early to catch the proper commuter trains to get back home.

Or will seeing the entirety of a ball game be worth not actually getting home until about Midnight?

Now I know there are some baseball fans who argue that the issue of a game’s pace is overexaggerated. They claim they’re baseball fans, and they want MORE game for their money. So who cares how long it goes, or if some games can approach the four-hour mark in length.

It wasn't Cocoa Puffs the Comiskey scoreboard went cuckoo for

PERSONALLY, I HAVE always thought that a quick-paced ball game is a well-played one. A game that drags out is usually one where the pitching stinks, the defense is bobbling the ball about and the sloppiness of play has overtaken everything.

For what I pay these days to get a ticket to see a major league ballgame, I’d want to see something of quality. That doesn’t mean artificially drawn out.

It even produces memories such as the first time I ever actually saw the Comiskey Park scoreboard go cuckoo with the fireworks and light show for a Sox home run. Catcher Marv Foley hit one of the 12 home runs he ever hit during five seasons of playing major league ball – and he did it off a future Hall of Famer.

Maybe Foley and I are the only ones who remember the shot. But it is moments like this that make baseball fun to watch, no matter how much some people want to muck it up with games that drag out forever.

  -30-

‘No ballgame today’ – we’ll have to wait ‘til spring for baseball to return

It looks so simple on paper – 5-3 – marked under a column of the scorecard for the 10^th inning.

There's no lonelier place than an off-season ballfield

I’m sure those who are Chicago Cubs fans will forevermore regard as a happy moment that bit indicating the groundball hit to third baseman Kris Bryant, then thrown to Anthony Rizzo at first base for the final out that ensured the first World Series title ever for a team that plays its home games at Wrigley Field.

YET I HAVE to confess to feeling a twinge of sadness at that sight.

Not because I cared about the Cubs or had a strong rooting interest in either team that was playing. But because I enjoy baseball.

And the final out of the final game of the World Series each year always brings out a feeling in me that the game is gone; for the time being.

Perhaps it’s because professional baseball teams play nearly every day during the season that they become truly wrapped up in the routines of our lives; in a way that the Chicago Bears with their once-a-week loss (or so it seems) just can’t.

THERE IS A beauty to the form of the ballgame as the pitcher vs. hitter challenge takes place; trying to see if one can out-think the other to their success. With other ballplayers hopping into action in those spare moments when contact is made with the ball.

Producing those moments that inspire newspaper photographers into action – freezing forever those bits of action for us to study. The diving catch. The bobbled ball. That moment of agony on an outfielder’s face as he realizes the fly ball is headed over the fence – and there’s not a thing he can do to stop it!

Even non-North Side felt something for Cubs

These moments that can make watching a ballgame a real treasure. Totally lost on those kinds of people who think anything other than a 15-9 ballgame is boring – although I actually think those high-scoring slugfests are dull because it usually means the pitching stinks, errors are being made in the field and everything is out-of-whack.

And now, it’s over. Another season is in the record books. Something that can be studied by those inclined to do so, while many of us will remember the individual moments of the games we actually saw. We’ll likely exaggerate their significance.

Line shot will never depart my mind

JUST AS I will forever recall a line drive double that Reggie Jackson hit off the right field wall at Comiskey Park in a 1979 ballgame – it struck me as being the hardest-hit ball I ever saw.

On the scorecard, it looks like a simple “2B-9” hit off pitcher Ken Kravec. But I remember it as a sizzling shot that never went more than 15 or so feet in the air – and would have been a home run if it had cleared the fence a foot higher instead of smashing into the wall.

Of course, the likely story would have been White Sox fan killed by Yankee home run. Because I doubt any fan in the outfield stands could have reacted quickly enough to avoid being hit in the face by the drive.

It’s these little moments that stick in my mind about baseball. The sight of ballplayers congregated on the pitcher’s mound deep in discussion about the game (and wondering if they’re really checking out the blonde who got herself a box seat right behind the dugout).

THE MANAGER CHARGING out of the dugout to argue with an umpire’s call – and knowing that the choice words he’d like to use to describe the ump’s mother will get him ejected!

Watching the coaches relay all those signals to the batter – and wondering how screwed up things will get if the coach inadvertently scratches his earlobe at the wrong moment?

I’d be willing to bet that similar thoughts are running through the minds of baseball fans everywhere – although for those who are Cubs-obsessed, they were able to delay them a bit, what with the parade that stretched from Wrigley Field through downtown on Friday.

Particularly if you’re inclined to believe Gov. Bruce Rauner, who in issuing the proclamation declaring Friday in Illinois to be World Champion Chicago Cubs Day said, “the Cubs winning the World Series is bigger than baseball.”

Baseball will be back come April

WHETHER YOU AGREE with that statement or not, the season is now over.

Unless you’re inclined to check out the stats in the assorted Latin American winter leagues (where, by the way, the late White Sox star Minnie Miñoso’s old Jalisco Charros team – he both played for, and managed, them – beat the Hermosillo Orange Growers 11-8 Thursday night), you’ll have to endure some five months of inactivity before we again see meaningful games being played.

For some of us, an empty ballpark is an even sadder sight than one when our favorite ball club loses.

  -30-