The baseball season begins today, and baseball purists are about to explode.
If you’re a purist, then you don’t want anything about the game changed. You want it just the way you always have had it. But those in charge of the sport felt the game needed some changes, and the most visible and exciting one is the pitch clock.
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Think back to players who would step into the batter’s box and take forever to get ready to hit. Then they would step out and step back in. But in the case of Boston’s Nomar Garciaparra, it was numbing. After every pitch, he would redo his batting gloves. At one point, you were praying they’d ban the gloves from the game.
But now there’s the pitch clock. Pitchers will have 15 seconds to begin their motion with the bases empty. They get 20 seconds if there’s a runner on base. If they don’t abide by the allotted time, a ball will be assessed. If the batter is not in the box by the 8 second mark, he will receive a strike.
And now comes word that spring training games, which took 3 hours and one minute to play in 2022, have now been shaved by 26 minutes. The average time is down to 2 hours and 35 minutes. Hallelujah! Praise the commissioner.
No more of those mind-bending games which took forever. Now get ready for the blowback... babysitters will revolt at some point. The game will be taking money out of their pockets. But when they grow up, they’ll understand. Unless of course, they turn out to be a purist.