News: Umpires complain of pressure -- from owners

[PeteBooth]

Originally posted by Patrick Szalapski
This from AP. P-Sz
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NEW YORK - Baseball umpires filed a grievance to keep the commissioner's
office from pressuring them to call more strikes and reduce pitches, saying
management's move ``threatens the integrity of the game.''

The grievance, filed late Saturday, says the commissioner's office violated the
umpires' new labor contract by keeping track of the average number of pitches
in games worked behind the plate by each umpire and ranking each umpire in that
category.

Patrick calling more strikes does not reduce the length of games. Eliminating Commercials will. IMO the 2 largest components of length of games are:

1. Commercials and

2. Pitching changes

1. Commercials I'd venture to guess that each game has approximately 25 - 30 minutes of commercials, and if the game is nationally televised, that number increases.

2. Pitching changes - First F2 goes and talks to F1 to give the relief pitcher time to warm - up. Then the pitching coach comes out and talks to F1 and finally the manger comes in and removes F1. Also, how many times do you see the righty / lefty moves. Also, whenever a pitching change is made - More commercials.

Owners should start looking inward when examining why the average lenght of a baseball game these days is over 3 hours long. All this hub-bub about the zone - it's enough already.

There already is a defintion of the strike zone - enforce what is written, tone down on the number of commercials and come-up with some sort of time limit on pitching changes and maybe we will get back to those 2 hrs. and change games.

Pete Booth