Three hours, 33 minutes to play a 2-1, nine inning game?

Yep, last night the Yanks and Red Sox managed to dawdle their way to a 3 and a half hour plus, low-scoring, nine inning game.

I've always been of the opinion that game lengths aren't really all that important-if you don't like baseball, it won't much matter to you whether games go three hours or two and a half-it will seem tedious either way.


But a line has to be drawn somewhere. It really shouldn't take that long to score three runs in a game with only twelve hits and eight walks. Bud Selig likes to say what matters is not game length so much, but the pace of the game-there couldn't have been much "pace" last night in New York. I'm sure the Yankees were happy to have the crowd of 49,000 plus on hand as long as possible to buy concessions and guzzle beer, but this is ridiculous. And it does seem to be a Yankees-Red Sox thing-the Astros and Braves, for example, played a 14 run,  8 1/2 inning job last night (Houston won, 10-4) in 2:53.

I don't have any answers, other than saying nobody should be allowed to call time when the pitcher's already in his motion. Plus there should be only one mound conference per pitcher per half inning, regardless of who initiates said meeting. Plus limiting replay to so-called boundary calls.


Plus the Yankees and Red Sox should be limited to seven innings, like high school games. Maybe they'll be able to keep things under three hours then.