Assuming this is for tennis…
No sitting down on chageovers. After each set, give 'em 5 minutes to drink their Gatorade.
And in order to limit time on line reviews, keep track of all shots, and have it ready to review at a second’s notice. Skip the stupid graphic.
And only give them one serve!
-Cem
I would love shorter time between innings, especially when I am attending the game. It is nice how much faster a minor league game is. However, the commercials are paying for the sport so I will go with **RickJay’s ** suggestion instead.
Batters need to almost never step out anymore and pitchers need to actually throw the ball after they get it back from the catcher. The time between each pitch has gone up a lot since the 70s and as batters on most teams now take more pitches, it is that much worse. Yankees vs Redsox is probably more likely to go 4 hours that to go under 3 hours.
Jim
I think the pitchers time to pitch and the
I missed this, a baseball game is much slower paced than it was 30 years ago. I would like to see some of it tightened up. It seems like all this stepping out started with Mike Hargrove in the seventies. I remeber Bill White calling him the one-man rain-delay.
Jim
Yep. There should be a 30-sec bat clock. If the batter isn’t back within the box 30 sec after the preceding pitch or play stops, then it is an automatic strike.
I would make it that if you are on the ground for more than 30 seconds, you are out for the period. After all, you are obviously injured and you need time to rest…
That would make taking a dive a calculation regarding whether or not you want to sit for the rest of the period (or maybe even the game).
I’ve played competetive also for many years…I have never had a “writhe on the ground disabled for 2 minutes, then get up ok and play” type of injury. Really disabling thumps take far longer to walk off, and anyone who routinely gets that injured falling on the grass is out of shape and shouldn’t be playing.
My rule: Institute a “3 delay” system. For any fall-related play stoppage where a person can’t immediately continue play, a team gets 3 delays allowed. After that, a mandatory substitution is required and counts against the team’s allowed substitution total.
I might support changing it to every four games instead of every two, but pro tennis is exhausting and as it is, the players go into the tank at the end of long matches. I think this would make it worse.
The graphic (which audiences like) takes maybe five seconds at a time and it’s used maybe three times in a typical match. This wouldn’t save any appreciable amount of time.
That’s one of those changes people propose sometimes- it would speed up the game, maybe a lot, but I think it would detract from the sport itself by making so many points end in faults. (At least you didn’t suggest no-ad scoring. I hate that shit.)
jet powered skates and rubber lined boards would speed up play in hockey. It would also make for some great bodychecks into the boards.
If you mean time that it takes to finish the game I am not sure hockey needs to do anyhting. However the reviewing of goals during replay can be very long at times.
Are there really that many matches where a team has players leave the field and rejoin on more than three occassions?
I used to think this too, and then I found myself having trouble paying attention to baseball games.
Ball games are great as a paced, measured event, but in recent years the pace has become glacial, especially in the postseason. There’s nothing wrong with a four-hour ballgame, if it’s a 10-9 thriller or a 14-inning nailbiter. There IS something wrong with a 4-hour ballgame that could have been completed in two nad a half hours, and don’t tell me I have attention span problems for wanting a 2.5 hour ballgame to be completed in two and a half hours. I don’t need them to whiz thru the game in an hour, but I do have a life.
Ballgames ARE moving slower than they did 30 years ago, and that takes away from it. Baseball is about tension and anticipation, but you don’t necessarily increase anticipation and tension by increasing the wait times. Long commercial breaks detract from the tension, as do interminable glove-and-helmet-adjusting sessions between every pitch. Maybe a few longer pauses add something to the drama in the ninth inning of a tied game with the winning run on second, but in the fourth inning I really don’t need to see Kevin Youkilis spend a full two or three minutes in every at bat (which, given enough pitches, he does) wiping flopsweat off his face and adjusting his batting gloves. If your batting gloves consistently can’t go a single pitch being adjusted, they are the wrong size, and you should be told to remove them or go get properly fitted gloves. It’s the major leagues, for God’s sake, come to the plate with the right equipment.
Meth.
For football and basketball, many/most of the timeouts used near the end of the game are for clock purposes, rather than for the normal reasons of rest, strategy, etc. Those could be replaced with “clock stoppages”, so that teams could have the effects of the timeout, without standing around for the duration.
In tennis, net cords on serves should be in play, like they are during the rest of play.
It’s not just the stepping out (though that can be infuriating), it’s the increased use of the bullpen in tactical situations. 30 years ago, the starting pitcher was “expected” to finish the game, with one or maybe two relievers coming in if he got shelled early on. Nowadays, especially in the 7th and 8th innings, you’ll see a parade of setup and situational pitchers – lefty specialists, ground ball pitchers with men on base, etc. – and each change is accompanied by a conference on the mound (to give the guy time to warm up), followed by warm-up tosses on the mound, etc. It’s pretty standard to see four pitchers in a box score, even five or six.
That’s just a fundamental change in the way the game is played, though, according to the same rules – I wouldn’t want to see that changed.
Maybe there could be a rule allowing only at most one step-out by the batter per plate appearance while the ball is live, barring something physical (like having your helmet slip off or contact lens come out), and a shortening of the “TV time out” between half innings.
Now if you really want to speed up the time it takes to complete the average baseball game, raise the height of the pitching mound again back to 15 inches. It was lowered to 10 inches back in 1968 specifically to increase the runs per game. Coupled with the DH rule introduced in the AL in 1973, scoring has indeed gone up, which in turn increases the length of the average game.
That, or allow the spitball 
I would enjoy seeing the DH removed, the pitching mound raised back up and even the spitball being made legal again.
You will never get them to give up money, so the commercial time will never decrease.
Jim
I hate no-ad. Almost as much as I hate “pro sets” (one set matches, to 8 games).
I happen to think that one serve would improve the game. All of those points won on aces or overpowering serves would go away (I’m assuming that the serve would slow down to improve percentage). There would have to be a re-emphasis on groundstrokes, starting with the return. Could serve and volley be far behind?
I’m not sure how I’d replace it, but if brevity is the goal, we could remove tiebreakers. If you’re tied at 6 games, it goes to a trivia-based (seated) tennis quiz!
-Cem
treis nailed it in post #2. TV timeouts have slowed hockey waaaay down. THey used to be 30 seconds, and that was fine. The game blazed by. Now at one minute the slowdown is tremendous over what the pace used to be.
Saying baseball should be sped up isn’t the same as saying it should “move at light speed.” The games could be tightened up while still maintaining a leisurely pace.
Of the proposed changes, I’d vote for the ones that reduce the time between pitches, whether it’s making the pitcher go a little faster or making the batter spend less time fixing his makeup between pitches.
Reducing the amount of time between innings is a good idea, too, but since we can only choose one–doing it the other way means that the game is more distinctly divided into periods of action and inaction, which I think would make it more enjoyable to watch.
As far as reducing pitcher changes–I agree that it’s often a bit ridiculous, but I do find the changes interesting in and of themselves.
Basketball:
Throw a punch, sit fifteen minutes. This rolls over into the next quarter. even the next game. Do it again, you’re ejected, plus pay three games’ salary to the player you hit.
In the last 3 minutes on the clock, forget foul shots. Add points as if the shots had been made, then resume play.
In the last quarter, time-outs cost points.
Baseball:
If a batter steps out to adjust his batting gloves more than once in an atbat, he must bat without them.
If a batter stops the game to adjust his jersey, he must bat without it.
Unless the field is muddy, no batter may pause to knock the dirt off his cleats.
Without a throw to a base, the pitcher must pick and throw a pitch within 25 seconds. The pitch clock stops for time-outs.
A batter may wear approved armor, but if a pitch hits the armor (except for the helmet,) he may not take a base for it.
When the third and subsequent pitcher(s) are called in for a team, the opposing manager may change his batting order while the new hurler warms up.
The commissioner must finally nail down the definition of the balk. The new definition cannot include “deceive the runner.” Deceit is, after all, the goal of a pitcher. The pitcher may not use rabbits, doves, scarves, or playing cards in his deceit.
When a player is ejected for offenses against a umpire, the current custom is that the manager also must abuse the umpire until he is thrown out. Skip that step. Simply throw out the player and his manager in one call.
Eliminate the timeouts in Rollerball!
I’m unclear on how this would speed up the game, but I like the idea. I propose:
4 points from beyond half court.
5 points from inside the opposite 3 point arc.
6 points from inside the opposite key.
The most important aspect of this modification of the game is about beating the Las Vegas spread. I had a bet with a friend on a Stanford March Madness game back when Stanford was good. Stanford was down 7 points or something like that and the other team was favored by 5 points. Stanford threw up a meaningless 75 foot shot at the buzzer and it went in, thus beating the spread. 500,000 gamblers fell out of their seat (or kicked their TV’s over depending on who you were betting on; I was betting against Stanford).