In more ways than one, the state 8-10 Little League baseball tournament that recently concluded in Aberdeen represented a trade-off. A successful trade-off at that.
The tourney was originally scheduled for another location, but District III Little League administrator Glen Dickason secured it in exchange for a Little League softball tourney planned for this district.
That was the second time in recent history that a state tournament in the 8-10 age group was relocated to Grays Harbor. Montesano agreed to take that tourney on short notice a couple of years ago after water restrictions hindered Spokane’s field preparation for the event.
Although weather conditions were ideal for the Aberdeen tourney, the event took 11 days to complete, ending last Tuesday.
The length of the tourney represented a compromise of sorts.
“Ideally, I’d like to see the first (championship) game on (the previous) Saturday, with a second game (if necessary) on Sunday,” Dickason acknowledged.
Completing a 13-team double-elimination tourney within that time frame, however, would require the scheduling of three or four-game programs on several weekdays. Upon accepting the invitation to host the tourney, Aberdeen Little League officials indicated they would have difficulty staffing weekday afternoon contests. With ample advance notice, Dickason agreed to adjust his scheduling.
“It’s tough for them to get enough people for the day games,” he said. “It’s not their fault, this is a blue-collar community and (the volunteers) have day jobs.”
Staffing levels weren’t a problem for the night games. Dickason, in fact, called the Aberdeen and Montesano tourneys the best-staffed state tournaments he had witnessed in several years. Conditions at Aberdeen’s Failor Field also drew raves from out-of-area sources.
“The trade-off is do you want two, three or four people (volunteering) all day or seven, eight, nine or 10 people here at night?,” Dickason asked rhetorically. “It seems like the Harbor leagues do a great job on state tournaments.”
Need for speed
During a recent baseball road trip to Toronto, I saw the Baltimore Orioles blank the Blue Jays, 2-0.
The game was far from noteworthy. The elapsed time might have been. At 2 hours and 21 minutes, it was the fastest major league contest I’ve witnessed in ages.
The pace of play in Toronto was clearly accelerated by the lack of offense. But that doesn’t apply to every low-scoring game.
Behind the pitching of Clayton Kershaw, the Los Angeles Dodgers nipped the Chicago White Sox, 1-0, earlier this week. The time of the game: 3 hours, 21 minutes — exactly one hour longer than the Toronto contest.
I consider myself a baseball traditionalist in most respects. But I firmly stand with critics who contend that the slow pace of major league baseball drives many fans, both young and old, away from the game.
Also alarmed about the length of games, MLB Commissioner Rob Manfred has floated several potential rule changes. Limiting mid-inning pitching changes and installing a 20-second pitch clock are among his trial balloons.
The latter proposal could signal the demise of former Seattle Mariner reliever Joaquin Benoit (now with Philadelphia). One of the slowest-working pitchers in baseball history, Benoit isn’t a good bet to even take the signs from his catcher within 20 seconds.
Largely ignored in this debate is one obvious solution: A timeout limit.
Baseball is the only major sport in which teams can call an unlimited number of timeouts. Imagine how long a college or pro football game would last if both the offense and defense could call time after every play.
My thought is that baseball should limit each team to three timeouts per nine innings. The kicker is that it would apply to all stoppages of play — pitching changes, mound visits, consultations between the batter and the third-base coach and replay challenges — unrelated to injuries or equipment issues such as broken bats. As in football, a team could retrieve one of its timeouts if a replay challenge is successful.
There is an old journalism adage (sometimes forgotten in the social media age) that the surest way to spoil a good story is to check it out.
In following that precept, I timed the delays on several Mariner games last year after each team had stopped play on three occasions. Honesty compels me to report that the results were less dramatic than I anticipated.
The average time saved by a timeout limit in that small sample would have been less than five minutes per contest. Even Seattle’s epic come-from-behind 16-13 win at San Diego that I witnessed last year would have been shortened by something like eight minutes — hardly significant in a 4-hour game.
But if it were coupled with a pitch clock and 30-second reductions in the breaks between innings (the latter proposal certain to be fought by television interests), a timeout limit might succeed in lopping some 20 minutes off a nine-inning game. That would be a positive first step.
There’s another piece of good news for those wishing for quicker major league games in the future. Turning 40 next week, Joaquin Benoit can’t last forever.
Rick Anderson: (360) 537-3924; randerson@thedailyworld.com
