After 157 years of organized professional baseball, those in the know—the advertisers—decided the game needed more excitement and shorter games. They tossed around ideas. Someone said, “We could have fielders throw the batted balls at the runners instead of just to another fielder standing at the base.” Still another asked, “Could we make the games just six innings?”
They ultimately decided to mirror other sports a bit and bring in a clock. And so they did. From that point forward, they installed a clock. The batter now had to get into the batter’s box on time, the pitcher had to throw the ball within a set limit, and the pitching coach had only so long to talk to the pitcher. And the pièce de résistance? They put a guy on second base to start any extra innings. Yes, I know—this is satire.
And it worked! They cut game times by almost half an hour—from a bit over three hours to a little more than two and a half. But wait!
This reporter just saw some baseball purists running out of the stadium, screaming!
Introducing Umpire Check
The baseball bean counters and brain trust have now introduced baseball’s version of spell check. They call it “Umpire Check,” or, more 
formally, the Automated Ball-Strike (ABS) Challenge System.
Now, each team gets a preset number of challenges to dispute an umpire’s ball-or-strike call. Teams can also challenge whether an umpire correctly called a runner safe or out.
Curious about how this would work, this reporter started digging into the rules—and promptly fell asleep reading them, just as he did while watching the first game that used them…
This Reporter Loves the Game
Anyway, as a child listening to games on a little red AM radio, this reporter loved those long Sunday afternoons, when one or two pitchers per team played the whole game, a bad call stayed a bad call, and everyone just played on. Players showed humility; they didn’t pump their fists as if they had rescued people from a burning building. Our firefighters don’t even do that when they actually rescue people from burning buildings!
And just as this reporter loved the game then—and later, when teams started using four or more pitchers a game, and even when someone decided to put a runner on second to start extra innings (who lost a bet and came up with that one?)—this reporter will still love the game. Speed it up, slow it down, make it more exciting, make it more boring…
This reporter will still love the game.
“Let’s play ball!”
