By Julie Buehler
I’m unapologetically “old school.”
I’d rather be picked up in a Ford F-150 than some Ferrari on a first date.
I can carry on a conversation without the assistance of technology, you know, like with real people.
I still enjoy steak and potatoes and can recite the capitals of all 50 states.
I love a great defensive battle between 2 football teams, I love a physical basketball games with no flopping and I love sitting at a ballpark with my beer and brat and buddies and watching baseball.
And I don’t care how long a baseball game takes, it’s the ONE team sport that doesn’t require a clock and MLB should keep it that way.
There’s a push to quicken the pace of the game, based on logic that a younger generation of fans aren’t interested in the 3+ hours each game requires, that the way to garner the attention of sports fans away from hard-hitting football or fast-paced basketball and direct them to the pastoral pastime is by accelerating certain processes and speed up the game.
So MLB has installed a shot clock on pitching changes and a rule that batters can’t take a step out of the batters box, managers’ trips to the pitcher’s mound will be accompanied by a stopwatch and play should be set to resume promptly after commercial breaks.
It took too many people in boardrooms and brainstorming on a big white board to come up with these dumb ideas.
Baseball is messing with the very thing that makes it so special.
When you’re watching football- 11 big bodies in a chess match with another 11 mammoth men—or you’re watching basketball – constant continuous motion, or hockey or soccer or most other team sports, there is so much going on, it’s difficult to do much be keep your eyes glued to the action.
But baseball is radically different. It’s almost relaxing. Its pace allows fans to take a vacation from the modern, over-stimulated life and not watch the clock, but enjoy the surroundings. What other sport celebrates the like of vaunted ivy at Wrigley Field or creates national headlines because the concession stands are so creative? (Deep-fried Oreos anyone? Churro sundae perhaps? Nachos on a stick then?)
Baseball should be boring. It should take 3 or more hours with each moment spent debating the different eras, pitchers, hitters, the best ballparks, noshing on hotdogs, spitting sunflower seeds, adjusting your ball cap, grabbing some nachos and hoping and praying your eyes are where they need to be when that ONE moment happens. When the amazing takes place and a hitter launches a ball into another stratosphere or a 2nd baseman dives to his left and throws from his knees to force an out at 1st. Or a curveball darts in and out of the strike zone like the fly chasing your last bite of hotdog.
THAT’S what makes baseball great. THAT’S what makes it the national pastime and why it’s the sport that’s got the greatest nostalgia seeped through its history. Because while the game is played on the field, life is lived in the stands.
Joyously and thoroughly lived.
And as baseball executives are buttoned-up in 3-piece suits, crammed around a giant boardroom table in massive leather chairs, complimenting themselves on their own brilliance and deciding how to change the game and cater to a TV audience or some Twitter-crazed, go-too-fast, hyperactive world, they fail to realize the saving grace of baseball is it’s quiet meandering through a life.
Baseball doesn’t pound your senses like other sports, it suggests you pay attention and has many ways of rewarding you for doing so.
Maybe I’m old school, but that should be good enough.
Julie Buehler hosts the Coachella Valley’s most popular sports talk radio show, “Buehler’s Day Off” every day from 1-4 on 1010 KXPS, the valley’s all sports station. She can also be seen every morning between 6-7am on KMIR sharing the coolest stories in sports. She’s an avid gym rat, slightly sarcastic and more likely to recite Steve Young’s career passing stats than American Idol winners. Tune in M-F 1-4 pst at www.team1010.com or watch “Buehler’s Day Off” on Ustream and KMIR.com for her sports reports.
