Baseball Is Speeding Up Again
Major League Baseball attempts to tackle the sport’s enduring problem: time.
In 1862, baseball’s promoters realized they had a problem: Games were taking too long. Interminable at bats routinely extended matches beyond the three-hour mark. Fans were bored; newspaper editors were irritated. Sound familiar?
Major League Baseball today begins a new season under a set of new rules—including requiring pitchers to deliver the ball to home plate in less than 20 seconds and batters to take their place in the box well before that—that provoked early outrage from loyal fans upset about the abandonment of the sport’s traditions. But the
