Regular season games must end within two hours

FRIDAY, JUNE 8, 2012 Constitutional amendments for team sports.

1. Regular season games must end within two hours.  Playoff games may have an additional 30 minutes for overtime.

2. No overtime in the regular season.
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Yesterday's inter-conference Yankee game in Washington lasted four hours, forty-nine minutes (289 minutes) and took fourteen innings to determine a winner: Yanks 5-3.  Twenty of the 25 Yankees played.  Sixteen times Yankee batters failed to drive in a runner on second or third base.

I recorded four hours, starting with the pre-game talk.  The recording expired after the Yankees had batted in the 10th inning.  Four hours to play 9.5 innings.

Many counts went to 3-2, which is where I have long recommend that the count begin.

That's entertainment?

What other entertainment form lasts that long?  Movie?  Play?  Opera?  Maybe opera but who the heck watches opera?

We're killing baseball and don't even know it.  We fans are complicit.  Too many attend these feasts of boredom because attendees don't really watch, just hang out, talk, eat, read, get seen, etc.  Who the heck can watch this?  I watched while I was also watching round three of the U.S. Open in golf on another TV.  I was fast forwarding between each pitch and the golf was still more interesting, at least until Tiger fell back.  Golf!  Golf was more interesting than baseball.  OK, it was a major tournament but still.  W must be nuts to not be up in arms about what has happened to our national pastime.

By 2020 the Major Baseball League (MBL) will be in major trouble.  Attendance and TV viewing will be way down.  By the time MBL is alarmed enough to do something it will do too little, too late.