Slow games, late finishes impede WS

Bob Wisener
Bob Wisener

Rather than tape the baseball game to allow unfettered viewing of college football, your multi-tasking sports fan here flipped channels several times during commercials.

Big mistake. All I missed was possibly the swing moment of these World Series.

By the time I got back to Channel 16 (the local Fox affiliate), Atlanta led Houston 2-1 after seven innings. The Braves got six more outs (don't ask who retired whom) for a 3-1 lead over the Astros going into Game 5 Sunday night.

It would be the first Series win for Atlanta since 1991, when Ted Turner, then married to Jane Fonda, owned the Braves and former president Jimmy Carter and wife Rosalynn watched from the stands. A Houston victory would send the Fall Classic back to Texas for its wind-up in the 50th year of the former Houston Colt-45s franchise.

Conceivably, we could have a Mr. November, a tag once given Derek Jeter after the former Yankees shortstop starred in the 2001 Series, which stretched into the 11th month because of 9/11. Never mind that the Yankees lost in seven games, Mariano Rivera, the game's only unanimous Hall of Fame selection, unthinkably blowing a save as Arizona won the Series decider.

No national crisis is responsible for this baseball season lasting so long. One can thank, or not thank, Major League Baseball for adding two rounds of playoffs to what once were best-of-seven league championship series. Television rights are enormous, and the teams can hardly say no what with so many $1 million backup second basemen under contract.

Of course, the graybeards out there can remember when the American League played the National League champion in October in what the late Dallas wordsmith Blackie Sherrod called the "World Serious." Back then, they played the games in the afternoon and kids sneaked transistor radios to school. That changed in 1971, when Pittsburgh hosted Baltimore in the first Series game under lights, and became a night-time show for good in 1987, when St. Louis played a game in Minnesota under God's natural light, even if under a dome.

Saturday's game, for instance, ended minutes before midnight in the Eastern Time Zone. As a youth, staying up for Johnny Carson's "Tonight Show" monologue meant a lot; imagine my sports upbringing had I not seen Carlton Fisk wave a ball fair for the Game 6-ending home run (Red Sox over Reds) in 1975.

The '75 Series went to the Reds, Carl Yastrzemski flying to left for the final out in a 4-3 game, after Cincinnati squeezed out a run in the top of the ninth. That seven-game set was largely credited with saving baseball when pro football loomed as the new national pastime. Baseball went through another rough stretch after the 1995 players' strike; Cal Ripken's iron-man quest of Lou Gehrig's consecutive games-played record and a home-run duel for the ages, Mark McGwire vs. Sammy Sosa, helped bring people back to the ballpark.

It says here that baseball is going through another crisis and that its sedate pace, what some like it about the most, may prove its undoing. With all the mound visits, pitching changes and batters stepping out of the box, games are dragging on and on. A nine-inning game in four hours is not uncommon. (Watching at home, one easily confuses the State Farm, Allstate and Geico commercials, not to forget Liberty Mutual.)

Another seismic change involves the use of pitchers. This marks the 30th anniversary of the World Series Game 7 that Minnesota's Jack Morris won in 10 innings over Atlanta's John Smoltz. Smoltz, now a Fox colorman alongside the tireless Joe Buck, called a game the other night that a pitcher was lifted after five innings with a no-hitter. Can you imagine Bob Gibson getting the hook that quickly?

More and more, baseball managers have become prisoners to front office-driven analytics. This has resulted in what;s now called "bullpen" games in which, instead of relying on three solid starters, Atlanta skipper Brian Snitker, say, may go with Drew Smyly "and staff." This gives a lot of players a chance to contribute, yes, but also increases the risk of handing the ball to a pitcher who doesn't have his good stuff that night. Gone are the days when the Braves reached the World Series with a starting rotation basically consisting of "(Warren) Spahn, (Johnny) Sain and pray for two days of rain."

Houston rolled into this year's Series when Boston's bullpen gave out in the ALCS, allowing the Astros to win in six games. Atlanta ousted the world champion Los Angeles Dodgers in a six-game NLCS after blowing a 3-1 series lead to the same team last year.

The Braves are doing it largely with players not on the team's opening-day roster. Through Game Four, 10 of their 18 postseason home runs had come from players obtained near the trading deadline. Two such players had key moments in Game Six; Jorge Soler (Kansas City) hit a go-ahead homer in the seventh inning for the first lead change of the Fall Classic and Eddie Rosario (Cleveland) robbed Jose Altuve of a possible game-tying homer to end the Houston eighth. Such players as Joc Pederson and Rosario, the NLCS MVP with three homers and two four-hit games against the Dodgers, helped compensate for the midseason loss to injury of past NL Rookie of the Year Ronald Acuña Jr.

Houston, forever driven to new heights by past AL MVP Altuve, tried to win a bullpen game Saturday night and the Braves, 2-0 winners the previous night, prevailed in another close one that ended late. None of the football games observed -- Auburn vs. Ole Miss, Ohio State vs. Penn State and Kentucky vs. Mississippi State among them -- produced such drama. Of course, in the only football game Saturday that mattered to many in the ballpark, No. 1 Georgia smeared Florida 34-7 in The World's Largest Outdoor Cocktail Party.

We have just ended an October that the leaves turned gold but the Braves, four-time Series losers in the 1990s, didn't fold. What surprises will this grand old game give us next?

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