Series shows baseball isn’t speeding up

LOS ANGELES— In the wee hours of Wednesday morning, in the home clubhouse beneath the ancient stands of Fenway Park, in the aftermath of the Boston Red Sox’s win over the Los Angeles Dodgers in Game 1 of the World Series, Red Sox Manager Alex Cora went to congratulate left fielder Andrew Benintendi, 4-for-5 with three runs scored that night, on a game wellplayed. “Great game,” Cora said. Benintendi’s weary reply: “It’s past my bedtime.” He may not have even known it, but at that moment, Benintendi was speaking for the entirety of the baseball-watching universe — at least the portion that resides on the East Coast of the United States. That night’s game, completed in a regulation nine innings, had started at 8:11 p.m. Eastern and ended at 12:03 a.m., making its time of game a tedious 3 hours 52 minutes. And it wasn’t even close to being the longest of this postseason.

Unlike the local working folks or schoolchildren, Benintendi had the luxury of sleeping in the next morning, ahead of Game 2 Wednesday night — which the Red Sox also won, in a turbocharged 3 hours 12 minutes, to take a two-games-to-none lead over the Dodgers in the best-ofseven series, which continues Friday night at Dodgers Stadium.

The glacial pace of play this post-season, coupled with scheduled start times that have been as late as 8:39 p.m. Eastern, has revived an old, persistent and — some would say — tired (no pun intended) criticism: that the sport of baseball is doing a disservice to fans by forcing them to choose between watching the endings of the most important games of the year or going to sleep at a reasonable hour.

And it may be contributing to the series’ disappointing television ratings thus far, with viewership for Game 2, despite the marquee matchup of majormarket teams, reportedly down 15 per cent from last year’s Game 2 between the Dodgers and Houston Astros.

The start times, at least, are a simple matter of economics. Major League Baseball and its broadcast partners — for the World Series, that’s Fox Sports — are seeking to maximize viewership for its showcase product, period.

The 8 p.m. hour (all World Series games have a scheduled 8:09 p.m. first pitch this year) hits the sweet spot between reaching prime-time viewers in the East and giving those in the West an opportunity to finish work. That is unlikely to change.