The Pitch Clock, Dollars, and the Soul of Baseball
The Pitch Clock doesn’t care about money, and I love it. It’s also a time machine that breaks the “Laws of Physics".
I remember watching Dodger games on KTLA, listening to Vin Scully tell story after story while the game on the field passed. I remember what it was like to watch games move along and there was time after the game was over to do something else. I was a kid and this was the 90s so riding bikes in the neighborhood late on a summer night was not out of the question. The point is, I remember the days when players had to get the game over with so they could make their shift for their second job. That’s a half-joke for those who remember when Kevin Brown signing the first 9 figure contract was a huge deal and player jobs were not really a thing anymore but were something former players talked about during the broadcast.
I moved to the east coast for college. As a Blue Jays fan, I moved to Rhode Island and became acquainted with the local version of baseball, particularly when playing the Yankees. My least favorite part of being around for this was being asked, with a straight face, by a Red Sox fan to “ditch the Jays and root for the Sawks”. My second least favorite part was watching Nomar Garciaparra and David Ortiz do their batting glove bit game after game. Then the Yankees came to town and it seemed like everyone played mind games. I could not form an opinion at the time, I didn’t have the words, nor was I going to tell Yankee and Red Sox fans their brand of baseball sucked, but baseball of the early aughts was not the baseball of my youth and I felt it.
I don’t remember hearing much about the Yankees and Red Sox in the 90s. I recall them being mid-level teams and Wade Boggs was mentioned a lot. This was pre-internet and pre-ESPN obsession with these teams. Being a west coast kid kept them out of my orbit. When they joined the spending spree that was kicked off by the Alex Rodriguez, Texas Rangers contract, baseball transformed from a beautiful game into a beautiful game with money involved. Spending the money to get the players increased the importance of collecting wins for owners and players needed to perform to get their generational contracts. One thing leads to another and the gamesmanship that leads to at-bats taking forever suddenly becomes a requirement for talent to get paid and so did the expectations from owners who paid for that talent. No one is there to care enough to say “hey, let’s speed this up.” To help cover up the problem, the Yankees-Red Sox rivalry of the aughts brought a buzz to baseball it had not experienced in a while. Everything is great, nothing to see here, just 4 hour long baseball games.
We have now reached a point where interest in baseball has to compete with March Madness to build pre-season interest. Baseball has to compete with NBA and to a minor degree, NHL playoffs happening early in the season. The NFL draft takes interest and the NFL is trying to hold more of the narrative during their offseason. College Football and the NFL regular season join in the conversation when baseball gets to its own playoffs. Playoffs, by the way, that lead to players taking even more time in-between pitches than they were in the regular season.
Baseball is a beautiful game of a bygone era with dedicated fans willing to pass on the identification of that which makes it beautiful to the next generation.
Baseball is trying to “up the action” by getting more balls in play and preventing shifts so more of those balls roll into the outfield. An honorable move but I think there is beauty to fielding the ball and making the throw. There is tension in seeing the ball and runner race to first base. There is beauty in fastball-curveball-change up & swing over the top of the ball for a strikeout. There is excitement in a double or a home run. These action events are great, but the game of baseball is truly witnessed in its beauty.
This is where the pitch clock comes into play. Those who want to tell the story of the game have to fight against the 90 seconds it takes for the next pitch to occur. Wait, it was a throw-over to first. The pitch clock brings back a flow to baseball that provides fans a chance to feel and see the rhythm of the game. The difference between a fastball and a curveball is noticed, rather than being told by the mph in the score bug. The fear of missing the next pitch being thrown will keep eyes on the game before they can jump to the next Tiktok or IG Reel.
Some fans say that pitch clocks are not part of the soul of baseball. I would argue that the soul of baseball was replaced by a bed of dollar bills and demands to show ownership wins for the dollars being spent. I have no problem with money being in the game. I, along with millions of others are entertained and there is value in that entertainment. The pitch clock is a doorway to the rediscovery of the soul of baseball. Those who jeer at its implementation because “it isn’t baseball” are missing the fact that baseball had something stolen from it over the last 2-3 decades. The pitch clock doesn’t care about money. The pitch clock cares about the future of the game. The pitch clock….
….is the soul of baseball.
Baseball needs to evolve to stay part of the modern conversation. Physics tells us time only travels in one direction. I would argue that, in a good way, the pitch clock is moving the game of baseball backward in time; toward a game, the diehards want back and a game that is more easily shared with the next generation of fans.
-CR
