Revolutionary idea to take boring out of baseball

Quit messing around and play ball. We all gladly pay to watch Nolan Arenado play baseball. His glove, his bat and his passion are all worth the price of admission. The Rockies agree. That’s why the team is paying Arenado a hefty $26 million in 2019 to play baseball.

But I wouldn’t give you a bent nickel to watch Arenado stand around and wait.

Baseball moves slower than the line at the Department of Motor Vehicles, and commissioner Rob Manfred knows it.

So what is baseball going to do about it?

Purists, who hate any suggestion baseball is boring, insist the lack of a clock is part of the game’s eternal beauty. But do nine innings have to take an eternity? As entertainment for the masses, if the ball isn’t put in play, the audience is going to find other ways to entertain itself.

How do we know? Your highdefinition television doesn’t lie. The next time Arenado digs in the batter’s box at Coors Field, check out how many folks in the background of your TV picture have a nose glued to a cell phone. Sometimes I wonder if the pop of a catcher’s mitt with yet another strikeout is nothing more than background noise for casual conversations being held in the stands.

Baseball should be a joy, not a test of patience.

“The Godfather” is the greatest movie of all time. It was 2 hours and 55 minutes of cinematic masterpiece. The average nine-inning game in 2018 ran 3 hours and 4 minutes. Arenado is great entertainer. But he ain’t Marlon Brando.

The drama of baseball is far too scattered, what with batters working the count for a walk, pitchers fiddling on the mound and managers calling to the bullpen for a specialty reliever.

That’s why baseball feels the need for a little more speed, as new proposals surfaced last week to address the snail’s pace of play. We are a nation of distracted drivers, too easily bored to sit back and enjoy the ride.

Among the ways baseball hopes to grab our attention are the universal use of the designated hitter, a 20-second pitch clock and a requirement that every guy taking the mound faces a minimum of three batters.

Hey, it sounds good to me. Nothing against baseball, but the game, like most good movies, was meant to be finished is no more than 2K hours, and it was during the 1950s, ’60s and ’70s. During the past 40 years, while everything else in life has moved faster, baseball has slowed down.

Maybe I’m nothing except an

old newspaperman, but let this be a fair warning from somebody who understands the signs of an industry in trouble: A business that stubbornly refuses to keep with the times slowly goes out of business. How to fix baseball? Let’s start by making sure the strike zone always extends from the chest to the knees. Yes, chicks dig the longball. But baseball has slowly morphed into a home run derby, with umpires acting as co-conspirators allowing hitters to demand the ball on a tee, where they can either drive it over the fence or strike out trying.

As a child of the 1960s raised on Frosty Malts in Wrigley Field, there has long been enough sugary sweet memories of baseball tradition in my gut to be adamantly opposed to the designated hitter. But the rules should be the same in every game, so I’m willing to concede it’s more entertaining to watch a professional hitter swing the bat than wait for a pitcher to lay down a bunt.

The DH for all games? Put me down as a yes.

The middle reliever, lacking the talent to either start or close, is among the worst sports inventions of all time, almost as bad as the $8 ballpark beer. So I love the requirement every pitcher must face at least three batters. No more left-handed bullpen specialists inserted to face the lefty clean-up hitter in the bottom of the seventh inning. That’s just analytics gaming the system.

These proposals, however, are mere tweaks. This old game, although grand, is tired and needs a jump start. Want to cut down on the dead time in baseball?

The game is a cat that doesn’t need nine lives. Nine innings have outlived their usefulness.

My modest proposal: Make it a seven-inning game. Replace the seventh-inning stretch with end-of-game drama. Now that’s one change that would really make every pitch and every at-bat count more.

It would encourage a manager to use his pitching staff more creatively rather than calling for a middle reliever in the fifth inning out of desperation. It would keep position players fresher for the seasonlong grind. It would allow us all to leave the ballpark in time to enjoy a little more of our beautiful Colorado summer nights.

You say you want a revolution, Mr. Commissioner?

Well, I’m here to change the baseball world.