Quickness of Game 1 a rare treat for fans

It’s late October and the World Series started Tuesday. Time to hunker down. This usually takes a while.

According to baseball-reference. com, no post-season baseball game had taken less than 21/2 hours to complete since 2011. In this postseason, games averaged more than 31/2 hours. In last year’s World Series between the Cubs and Cleveland, the seven games averaged three hours, 42 minutes.

So it’s not unusual, at 10:30 p.m. ET, to be settling in for another hour or more of baseball.

And yet, on Tuesday, Kenley Jansen induced a first-pitch out from Houston’s Jose Altuve to secure a 3-1 Los Angeles victory in a neat, tidy and extremely pleasing-toconsume two hours, 28 minutes. Yep, that’s right. Savour it. That’s the shortest World Series game in a generation, the shortest since 1992, when Tom Glavine threw a complete game for Atlanta, but lost to the Toronto Blue Jays 2-1 in Game 4.

Now, try to replicate it. Major League Baseball commissioner Rob Manfred should be granted wide latitude in making sure the pace of play increases.

If Manfred needs pitch clocks, use pitch clocks. If he needs to limit visits by the pitching coach to the mound, then limit visits. If he needs umpires to enforce a rule that hitters must keep one foot in the batter’s box in between pitches (as long as they haven’t fouled one off ), then empower the umps. This is what baseball can and should be: clean, crisp fun.

It likely will not be repeated.