Pitch clocks should make more than just baseball faster

I hope baseball’s new pitch clock starts a social movement because many areas of life suffer from dawdling.

Whether the new rules improve or hurt baseball is something others can argue about. All I can say is I never found watching players rearrange dirt or adjust their outfits all that fascinating, so a little urgency seems like a fine idea.

Pitchers this season will have to throw a pitch in 15 or 20 seconds, depending on the situation. And batters will get just a single timeout at the plate.

As soon as I heard about this brisker approach, I began identifying other activities that would benefit from the same treatment. Here are my top four, not necessarily in order of tedium:

Dogs going to the bathroom

Look, I know evolution takes time, but after a few eons of domestication, wouldn’t you think that dogs would have taken a hint from humans and become more businesslike about doing their business? Their elaborate backyard sniffing and circling rituals are glaringly out of step with the pace of society. Dogs definitely need a pitch clock.

Presidential campaigns

After more than two centuries of practice, American politicians still have yet to figure out that when something is painful, people want less of it, not more.

Granted, choosing our chief executive is more important than deciding whether to throw a curve or a slider. So, let’s be generous and give them 15-20 weeks to make the case. Right now, they’re taking nearly two years.

We can start by cutting out the following: the inevitable autobiography (usually done by a ghost writer), the prolonged run-up that precedes the candidacy announcement, the meaningless straw polls, three-fourths of the debates, four-fifths of the hard-hatted plant tours and every last one of the TV commercials.

Self-driving cars

This supposedly game-changing concept has been just over the horizon since last century. We’ve produced who knows how many vehicles bristling with more technology than a spacecraft. And yet we still lack assurance that these miracle cars, left to their own devices, won’t just get flustered and plow into a bridge abutment.

Sorry, wizards of technology, but the dinosaurs died and turned into fossil fuel faster than you’re revolutionizing transportation. We’re putting you on a pitch clock.

Movies

To be brief: two-hour limit. End of story.

Can’t produce a masterpiece in that brief span? Well, the makers of such Oscar-winning films as “Moonlight,” “All the King’s Men,” “In the Heat of the Night,” “On the Waterfront,” “The French Connection,” and “Casablanca” managed it.

Have you seen the running time of 2023 Oscar nominee “Avatar 2: The Way of Water”? A bladder-straining three hours and 12 minutes. At that length, it should be retitled “Avatar 2; Where’s the Bathroom?”

Joe Blundo is a Dispatch columnist. joe.blundo@gmail.com @joeblundo