Two hours, 36 minutes for the greatest game of all time: Pirates 10, Yankees 9.

Let's throw game seven of the 1960 World Series into the mix from yesterday's post.

Monday, July 22, 2013
Four hours, 46 minutes for eleven innings. That's entertainment?

Pitches thrown:
Yankees 459
Red Sox 452
total  911

In 1967 and 1968 I attended twi-night (game one started about 5:00PM) doubleheaders in which game two went into extra extra innings...

Let's examine the three extra innings games mentioned above.

1967 20 innings: 6 hours, 9 minutes (369 minutes) 369/20=18.5 minutes per inning
1968 19 innings: 5 hours, 4 minutes (304 minutes) 304/19=16 minutes per inning
2013 11 innings: 4 hours, 46 minutes (286 minutes) 286/11=26 minutes per inning

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The 1967 and 1968 games were low scoring while the Sunday night near five hour assault on baseball played in Fenway Park was Red Sox 8, Yankees 7 in 11 innings.

Thursday, October 13, 1960, Forbes Field

Attendance: 36,683, Time of Game: 2:36

Pirates 10, Yankees 9

That's 156 minutes divided by 9 innings = 17 minutes per inning

That is in line with the two extra long games a few years later.  For more context, that 1960 WS game had only five walks and no strike outs.  NO STRIKE OUTS!  That's one of the reasons I consider it the greatest game of all time.  Walks and strike outs increase the number of pitches, which, of course, increases the time.

Another time factor is that Bill Mazeroski homered off Ralph Terry on the second pitch in the ninth to win the game, so the inning is abbreviated.  If we add another ten minutes we have about 18 minutes per inning.

So what happened in the last 50 years or so to increase the length of games and reduce their entertainment value?  Does it matter?  It happened.  I could excoriate the inept commissioner yet another time but all the owners are at fault.  They have let their product, entertainment, call it what you will become less interesting.  What kind of people do that?