Here is the foolish quote of the day….
“Football is four hours, four and a half hours. The Super Bowl was five hours. Listen man, baseball fans are not going to stop watching the game because the game is too long. Let’s stop that. I think that’s ridiculous.”
Source: Kenley Jansen calls MLB’s pace-of-play initiatives ‘ridiculous’
The very wise Jared Diamond tweeted…
What these players have to understand is the pace of play initiatives aren’t about baseball fans abandoning baseball. They are about attracting new baseball fans. We can argue about whether one will lead to the other, but let’s at least be intellectually honest about it all. https://t.co/n8f8T2YTXT
— Jared Diamond (@jareddiamond) February 14, 2018
And my take….
Baseball should take a hard look at boxing and horse racing. Baseball should take a hard look at the NBA and Soccer. Baseball should look at the surveys and where the average age of fans are.
I’m not going to watch the four game Mr. Jansen, and I have already stopped watching the entire postseason (unless the Mets appear) because of 8:30 starts. I’ve also given up on Sunday, Monday and Thursday Night Football.
We live in a Netflix world. I can’t sit through a 4 hour slog and I’m not going to do it. This next generation is content to take in the game in two seconds via House of Highlights.
This is the Global Warming Debate of Baseball – and it’s the late 1990’s and I am Al Gore. Y’all can ignore me and try to fix it in 20 years when your fans are all 70 and nobody young cares. See you at the big boxing match.
