Time To Play

On the one hand, I don't care for the idea that baseball has added time clocks. On the other, you still have to give the other guy his chance. You can't play keep away and burn the clock. That's still an important difference between it and any timed sport.

The real bottom line is that had players played and not dallied no clocks would be necessary. Look up a game on You Tube from 1975. The pitchers threw promptly and the batters were ready to hit and not adjusting every article of clothing between pitches. Go look at game times from 80 or 100 years ago. Everyone kept a pace, and you could get a match done in a reasonable time.

So there have been a couple embarrassing moments during spring training so far. Pay attention, Manny Machado. The players only have themselves to blame for this.

Play Ball!

Well, I'll happily say it: I'm glad the baseball lockout is over. I don't even mind one certainly unintended outcome: the regular season will last a few more days into October. Oh joy, oh rapture!

I mean that too. While I will readily concede that those involved with the game at the major league level, the owners and the players (too many folks blame the owners solely for the issues within the sport, but the players are looking out for number one as well) adversely affect baseball as a sport, I am and will be a fan all my life. I try to avoid thinking about the troubles surrounding the game as only so much stuff and nonsense. It's a bane on professional sports on almost any level. I don't like what money and notoriety have done even to curling, quite frankly. Money alters things, even athletics. It's just that simple.

Give me baseball over football, basketball, hockey, or soccer any day. I get that some sports have clocks or the games might go on forever. Still, I regard that as a debit, a legitimate object for criticism. How many games are won in the last few seconds simply because the clock is allowed to stop an almost infinite number of times until the team with last possession of the ball can effectively sneak in a win anyway? (I'm looking at you, football). It lacks integrity; it is unsportsmanlike. 

But of timed games generally: you're ultimately only playing keep away. It would be better to play towards a certain number of points that against a clock.

All right, no more ranting in what I intended to be a positive column. Go baseball! I will be watching as soon as spring training begins this coming Friday, and will stay in the bubble all summer and, hopefully, into November.

Time Outs are Evil

Time outs in any timed sport (except for those called by officials) simply lack integrity. No player, team, or manager/coach, indeed anyone with a direct interest in the outcome of the game, should be able to stop the clock merely because it's to their advantage. It is nothing less than unsportsmanlike.

It's entirely just to argue against nonofficial time outs. Part of a timed sport almost by definition is how well one can play during the time allotted. If you run out of time it generally says something about poor clock management, poor decision making, and poor play more than anything else. As such, time outs punish good defense and reward error. How many games, especially football and basketball games, are won by teams who took leads which they should not have had the opportunity to take simply because they could stop the clock merely because it suited them and only them, or prevented another team from running out the clock when they led? Either instance is hardly a fair measure of athletic ability. And neither have integrity.

Isn't that what sports are supposed to be about, integrity, fair play, and sportsmanship? If they aren't, why play them? What could they teach us otherwise except that it's okay to win any way we can, so long as we win?

But let's call time outs what they really are: manufactured excitement. The fans are getting played because the powers that be want more excitement any way they can generate it, to keep interest and make more money. Fans have bought into this hook, line, and sinker, so much so that they don't even realize their allegiances are being toyed with, so much so that they don't even care about whether the rules are sportsmanlike or not. It's become the Roman Colosseum all over again, bread and circuses, and it indicates a serious flaw in our society.

Time out rules are inherently partial because they play solely towards one side at a given, uh, time. But a good rule must be impartial; it should never play only to one side's advantage. Rules ought to be wholly impartial, and not simply in sports but in life in general. They require impartiality so that they may be applied fairly and justly.

Part of it too is that time outs separate acts from their natural consequences. If a team plays poorly for 58 minutes but can stop the clock often late in a game it makes light of their earlier mistakes. Does life give us such chances? Then why ought sports, if part of their intent (as defenders of athletics so often say) is to make us better people? Can they really make us better people if they allow wanton selfishness at critical points during play?

No, they can't. Until we learn that a game holds no lesson for us unless it has the most completely impartial rules possible then that game will only teach us that winning is everything. But when the Great Scorekeeper comes, will he accept that defense?