Article:Baseball Notebook: Speeding Games Up?

When is major league baseball going to stop issuing worthless press releases about speeding up the games. I watched a pitcher last night take 25 seconds between pitches and saw batters walk a long way from the batter's box and nothing was done about it.

The players and umpires both have paid no attention to the speed up the games press release. I have yet to see an umpire look at their watch while waiting to see how long a pitcher takes to deliver the ball to home plate.

It is almost like somebody in the major league office had nothing better to do so typed up a press release about speeding up the games and released it to the wire services. In one game last week I saw a batter walk out of the batter's box several times in a row and nothing was done about it.

Until major league baseball is ready to enforce the speeding up of games they need to cease and desist issuing these worthless press releases. If they seriously want to speed up the games they would install a buzzer that would sound off when a pitcher took more than 12 seconds to deliver a pitch or a batter walks out of the batter's box so these players could be penalized.

For years the umpires have made their walk to the mound to break up conferences at the mound but it is more funny than a serious job of enforcement. The umpire walks close to the conference then the conference magically breaks up as soon as the umpire shows his presence.

Major league baseball pulled this same charade last year of pretending to speed up the games and nothing was done then and nothing is being done now to enforce the rules so it is time to just the games unwind the way they unwind no matter how long they take. The pitchers that work fast are going to continue to work fast and the pitchers that are slow to deliver the ball like Steve Trachsel  will continue to be as slow as Christmas. The batters that like to get away from the plate will continue to stroll away from the plate so let us hope major league baseball ever issues another speed up the games edict because fans are tired of being told the games are being speeded up when any intelligent fan knows better.