Non Sequitur by Wiley Miller for July 15, 2017

They must of gotten the rules from “The Big Book of Baseball.”

Speeding it up woud help, and for football, how about no time outs in the second half.

Now all they need is a way to speed up the negotiations.

They’re “speeding up” pro football by cutting the overtime period from 15 minutes to 10. Overtime. A phenomenon occurring maybe 2% of the time. Yeah, that’s gonna make a BIG difference!

Best way to speed up a baseball game is to play basketball instead.

If you don’t have the time to enjoy the experience, do something else.

I think that fielder behind the pitcher is stealing signals…

So very glad the Sermon on the Mount not written with the overused legalese.

Wow, is this really a thing? ‘Baseball is too long’? Back in the day, baseball was an all day event, and you loved it. You didn’t want it shorter. I guess this has to do with the recent phenomenon of ‘multitasking’, that the millennials think they can handle but prove time and time again they can’t. Like walking and texting. I still laugh at the girl that fell in the fountain. And they guys that don’t actually watch the road, so drive off a cliff because a GPS told them it was ok.

Yeah, get the lawyers involved. That’ll speed things up!

Take the example of Little League rules.

Once TV became the third team on the court/field/pitch, every sport changed and not for the better. TV commercial timeouts? Reviews that drag on for a minute or longer? Repeated graphics-loaded replays of outstanding goals or tee shots? Commentary by play-by-play experts about some other game? Changing camera views during plays?

For those who appreciate being taken for a ride, carry on. IMO A waste of however many hours it takes to reach the final gun.

I love the commentators who know so much about the game that they are too good to be coaches. They can come up the most boring and useless information just to hear themselves talk. “You know Joe, that last strike reminds me of a strike thrown by the great Sandy Koufax against Ron Swoboda of the New York Mets on July 18th, 1968 in the second inning. It was the bottom of the second, one on, a 2 and 1 count and a Thursday afternoon with the temperature in the low 80’s.”

I’ve been watching baseball since the Dodgers were in Brooklyn. The game itself was never an all day event. The “all day” was pre-game picnics (now tailgating), watching BP, maybe special pre-game events, and so on. And it was a few hours, not all day. That still happens. But the game itself has gotten a lot longer, from 2 to 2-1/2 hours to 3 to 3-1/2 hours or more on average.

So far all the efforts to get rid of time wasting during the game have done zilch except for intentional walks. Now the batter is just given the base with no pitches thrown. A whole ten seconds per walk saved. Woohoo and yippee.

I rarely watch a ball game on TV. I literally have to have nothing better to do. I do, however, frequent our town’s minor league team. My wife and I can park the car, walk less than a block to the ballpark, enjoy a beer and a hot dog, watch the game, watch the fireworks (on the weekend): all for a bit over $30.

That’s the one thing I love about soccer. There are only 17 Basic Laws or Rules of the game.

As a former referee, I will admit, interpreting those Rules can be challenging, at times.

The blind leading the blind.

Men! Or, at least, my man… can’t remember his relations’ birthdates, I have to, but any and every sports trivia…

I don’t watch sports, just female volley ball. That’s a sport? And how!

Two words: Finnish baseball. Check it out on YouTube.

TV commercials is the one thing that makes games so long. Cut commercial time in half and games would be at least 20 minutes shorter. But you know that won’t happen. Owners want those big TV contracts and commercials pay for that.

Speeding up the game to allow more time for commercials, does not speed up the game at all.

If the batter steps out the box, strike. If the pitcher doesn’t pitch as fast as Mark Buehrle, automatic ball called.

I’ve infinitely speeded up the game. I stopped watching and do things I actually enjoy

Oh no! The lawyers got involved!

Ain’t it the truth!