The Test of Time

But ugly October patterns are emerging. The American League has become too superior for the World Series' good. The AL has swept five of the last 10 World Series and the overall superiority, 34-16 in games, is embarrassing. Baseball can't control the relative strength of its leagues. But the game must realize that, when competition seems imbalanced, fans simply will not tolerate a postseason filled with games that average more than 3 1/2 hours.

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Game 3 took 4 hours 14 minutes, the longest nine-inning game in World Series history. Game 2 of the ALCS, however, is the poster child for everything that is wrong with lugubrious, self-indulgent October baseball. The Indians and Red Sox required 5 hours 14 minutes to play 11 innings. I watched two hours of the game during a layover in Minneapolis, left in the sixth inning to fly to Green Bay to cover the Redskins, got to my hotel room, turned on the TV for a final score and, voila, the game was only in the 10th inning. By the time Cleveland scored seven runs in the 11th, I was happily asleep.

Baseball purists say that games now start too late at night for children to watch. So, how will the sport cultivate new fans? I say that baseball is lucky the games are too late for kids. Children see the tolerable 2:45 version of the sport during the regular season. It's better they aren't exposed to the virtually unwatchable October games that average almost an hour longer.

Baseball's biggest problem isn't steroids. With tougher drug-testing rules and enforcement, that will pass. The game can cope with high salaries thanks to increased revenue sharing and new revenue streams. Even high ticket prices can't stop the sport from setting new attendance records year after year. Gorgeous new ballpark palaces make people want to pay the freight. The quality of play on the field is excellent. The balance between offense and defense, while still tilted too far toward offense, is tolerable.

However, time-of-game, which is still too long during the regular season, is an absolute killer in October. To watch games of this length, you don't have to be a fan, you have to be a certifiable fanatic. And it is a problem that can be cured. The few minutes added to postseason games by long and lucrative commercials is not the problem. Every business has to make a buck.

The problem is the players. The pressure of playoff baseball freezes them. They don't realize it, but almost everybody moves in slow motion between pitches. The reason is simple. Every innocuous at-bat, from the first pitch of the game, is filled with such intensity in the players' minds that they react as if it is the bottom of the ninth, bases loaded, game on the line.

This simply can't be allowed to continue. It's killing the sport's showcase month. Umpires are the only cure; but, luckily, they're also the perfect instruments for the remedy. With the threat of calling a ball on a dawdling pitcher or a strike on a human-rain-delay hitter, they have more than enough muscle to cut 30 minutes off the current obscene length of October games.

When Jonathan Papelbon, aided by the thin Denver air, broke Tug McGraw's 27-year-old record for highest celebratory glove throw in victory, it was 12:05 a.m. back in Boston, thanks to an entirely typical postseason game that took 3:35.

No doubt every breathing member of Red Sox Nation was still awake to watch. But, baseball needs to ask, who else was?