"They're the two clubs that don't try to pick up the pace," said Joe West, the chief of the umpiring crew working the three-game (New York-Boston) series, to the Bergen (New Jersey) Report "They're two of the best teams in baseball. Why are they playing the slowest?
"It's pathetic and embarrassing. They take too long to play."
What Joe West is talking about is how the games between the two rivals seems interminable. The nine-inning game goes up to three or four hours. But that isn’t the norm for them.
What is pathetic and embarrassing is that West talked. If MLB can fine team officials, managers, and players for rips, then why shouldn’t they do the same for umpires?
Strike one on you, West.
Yes, I’ve been at a game that took that long and even longer. I would look at the watch and see it close to 11 and think about how difficult it would be difficult to get back to New Jersey. That’s an hour and thirty minutes or maybe two hours tops before I get home (depending how late and how long the line is at Port Authority). But I never left early. I always finished the game. What would have been more agonizing is going then missing some crucial play or at- bat.
Ever since I turned off the television when I thought that Ginebra was going to lose to Manila Beer in Game 1 of their finals in 1996 (I heard my neighbors roar as Billy Ray Bates dunked on Abet Guidaben for the win), I learned my lesson that Yogi Berra was right, “It ain’t over ‘til it’s over.”
Said Mariano Rivera, "It's incredible. If he has places to go, let him do something else. What does he want us to do, swing at balls?"
In the ESPN report, Jonathan Papelbon told WEEI.com: "Have you ever gone to watch a movie and thought, 'Man, this movie is so good I wish it would have never ended.' That's like a Red Sox-Yankees game. Why would you want it to end?"
He added: "If you don't want to be there, don't be there. Go home. Why are you complaining? I'm not going to sit somewhere I don't want to be. If you go to a movie or any entertainment event and you like it, you're going to stay and watch and you're not going to want it to end. If you don't, then you won't. Why is it such a big deal?"
Pick up the pace? Is this the NBA?
Major League Baseball says that the average baseball game lasts 2 hours and 52 minutes. The Red Sox average 3:04 and the Yankees 3:08.
While yes, it does take too long, but so what? That’s the nature of the game. To call out the two teams as “pathetic?” And the refs shouldn’t be making public statements like that. Does this give them a short fuse when calling games? Do they expand their strike zones just to get players out?
Bud Selig, MLB commissioner, you’ve got a problem on your hands because West and his crew Angel Hernandez, Paul Schreiber, and Rob Drake have been compromised. What’s to stop them from taking it out on Rivera and Papelbon next time they’re in the game?
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