Same here, my son is also in 4th grade. And despite being excited about it, he's watched no more than a few innings of night games. If the game started at 7:00, I could justify letting him stay up to watch. But post-8:00? Can't do it because there's no chance the game will end anywhere near a justifiable time.
Is this really that different than in the past? I didn't get to watch most of the 1986 World Series as an 8 year old because of late start times, and distinctly remember my Dad coming to wake me up to watch the end of Game 6 when he thought the Sox were going to win and I think it was something like 11 o'clock? Didn't effect my adult baseball viewership any.
It became “normal” in the age of Bowie Kuhn. MJ alluded to the Golden Age in his post, and if you’ve read enough about the travails of the Brooklyn Dodgers, you’d have internalized the stories of sneaking a transistor radio to school to surreptitiously listen to the Dodgers/Yanks games under the watchful eyes of your teacher the nun. She knew what you were getting away with, but she loved the Dodgers, too.
Only way imo to fix it is to limit number of pitching changes and eliminate mound visits entirely.
They have to do something about replay. It usually takes way too long. Limit it to one minute. If they haven't overturned it in that time, it's inconclusive and the call stands.
These late start times are pushing back Sprowl's aperitif a half-hour!
And ditching the note cards. How much time was wasted because of Maldonado checking his note cards after every pitch?
The weekend games have tended to be on at 7 even 8pm as well
If there are three replays in a game (and there usually aren’t) and they each take three minutes that’s only nine extra minutes.
Sacrificing a couple hours of work day seems way more practical than having to stay up until past 1 am and being a zombie the next day. I mean think about it. If games start at 7pm ET, at least west coasters can work until 3p local time or later and still catch the entire game. East coasters get maybe 5 hours of sleep and their work days go to shit.
Weekend is different (though there it's probably a competition issue), but these are national games... 6pm is 3pm on the West Coast including the by far largest state in the nation. No national game is going to start before 8pm EST, same reason the NFL starts at 8 and NBA, and every sport.
Thanks for the “behind-the-scenes” insight into this problem. My son, a baseball nut/sports management major and I have been chewing this over from a MLB vs TV networks vs fans point-of-view, trying to come up with an answer that more-or-less satisfies everyone. Not sure there is one. I’m not surprised, though, that history-trumps-technology, i.e. that the sting of the 1995 experiment might be hampering a digital “two screen” fix.
No, it isn't to blame, as it isn't just one thing. But it's an unnecessary waste of time, and every 10 minutes is significant.
Super Bowl is at 6:20ET. CCG'S are 3 and 6:30ET IIRC. 75% of the early playoff games are 4:30ET or earlier and the late games are on Saturdays only.
Good post, but they overlap NBA playoff games, and while admittedly there are more of those, it's maybe time to take another stab at overlapping MLB playoff games since it's been 20+ years since 1995.
Personally I'm glad they get the calls right (at least somewhat more often) but then again I am usually watching on DVR and I FF through replay delays.
The only solution is for the games to be shorter. Routinely having 4 hour games isn't going to work for anyone. I know it's never going to happen but if I were MLB, I'd start trying 3 balls and 2 strikes in some winter league or something just to see how it works. But just like spending a day at the horse track used to be a special event but now is something few families have the desire to do, so is spending 4 hours watching a baseball game (more if you include pre- and post-game demands).
17 3-minute commercial breaks (not even factoring in mid inning pitching changes) is 51 minutes. That's a major part of the problem right there.
The TV “time outs” between half innings eat up a huge chunk of time. MLB should make the TV broadcasters do what soccer broadcasters do all over the world, go to some kind of in-game advertising. There could still be between-inning ads, just not as long.
The streaming services like YouTube TV, PS Vue, etc, are still pretty new to the game. Most true cord cutters would probably use an over air antenna for something like this I think, to grab a local affiliate of a network and grab shows from a Hulu or Netflix. It seems like at least a slightly aggressive move for a league worried about ratings. Even the NFL paired with broadcast for Thursday night games (though that probably wasn’t their only motivation; probably combined with overhead).
You just listed all weekend games... in response to a post about weekday games.
