Miller: Why did those World Series games last so long?
From Sam Miller at ESPN.com on November 1, 2019:
Baseball’s regular season has the pace-of-play problem with which we’re all familiar: Many of the 2,430 games take on dead time until they are boring, lulling. It’s a good dish, watered down until you don’t love it as much.
The postseason’s pace-of-play problem is different. It’s not that games get boring, since a World Series game is almost always tense and urgent, and if you’re on a cross-country flight with cable TV access you will enjoy every moment of it. But most people aren’t on cross-country flights. Most people have full lives, and they have to squeeze in their baseball indulgences among other obligations, like family, and sleep, and moving at least once every four hours to avoid nerve damage. These postseason games are thrilling, but they are so lengthy that they become impractical for many otherwise enthusiastic customers — a good dish that goes cold before it can be finished.
Nearly every game in this World Series was long, even by World Series standards. Of the 13 longest nine-inning World Series games this decade, six came this year.
Read the full article here: https://www.espn.com/mlb/story/_/id/27977973/why-did-world-series-games-last-long
Originally published: November 1, 2019. Last Updated: November 1, 2019.