Player complaints about blame for slow play fall on unsympathetic ears

Convincing players to pick up the pace will be less disruptive than trimming commercial breaks or changing rules

Major League Baseball commissioner Bud Selig speaks during a news conference following baseball meetings at the Otesaga Hotel on August 15, 2013, in Cooperstown, New York. Mike Groll / AP Photo
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It was bound to happen. After copping much of the blame for baseball games dragging on for increasingly long periods, the players are fed up and starting to strike back.

Several players – almost all of them unnamed – have complained to ESPN’s Jayson Stark that they feel concerned over a perceived lack of input on Major League Baseball’s committee tasked with finding ways to speed up the game.

On one hand, this makes sense. If significant changes to the game are in play, players should have more of a presence at the table than their union representative.

On the other hand, their complaints are woefully lacking in pathos. One player said MLB commissioner Bud Selig’s comments on how “aggravated” he is with hitters stepping out of the box after every pitch “aren’t helping”.

They would rather reduce commercial breaks between innings and blame analytics that encourage hitters to take more pitches or the rise in pitching changes than risk messing with their almost fetishistic routines built over decades of playing baseball.

Well, tough. Hard as it might be for their fevered egos to hear, players are the reasons games are taking longer and changing their behaviour is the best way to fix the problem. The other factors mentioned by the players involve the finances, strategy and rules of baseball, all of which would be much more difficult to change than getting players to quit faffing about and get on with it.

The players are the source of the problem and it is up to them to help fix it.

pfreelend@thenational.ae

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