How much time do you allow during a timeout?

[BuggBob]

It was a dark and stormy day, a cold wind blew from the south, rain / hail / sleet / snow fell from the sky. The field had been properly prepared and the out of town visitors had arrived on time - we started to play. The home team coach used every means to slow the game down, multiple visits, changing players, multiple pitching changes (including pitchers who could not pitch). The visitors had a comfortable lead and in the top of five swung at the next nine pitches including balls clearly in the dirt or so far over their head if they stood on a ladder and used a 10’ pole they could not have hit the ball. Clearly the visitors wanted to get the game over before the weather or darkness took over. Home coach saw that the batters were going to swing at anything – changed pitchers. The visitor coach told me that if the game was called because of weather or darkness he would protest the obvious delaying tactic used by the home coach. The top of the inning over the bottom starts with two quick outs, a walk, a hit, and error and two runs later the inning and the game is over. The field was wet – but playable, the sky was darker – but playable, I was wet – and happy to be finished.

I understand the visitors frustration, if the game needed to be suspended because of weather or darkness, they did not want to drive 50 miles to replay a game they had already won. So I think by protesting they would pick up from the point the game was protested. I duly noted the protest on my lineup card but I did not tell the home coach about the protest as I did not want to spend the next ten minutes explaining why there was a protest (and I had decided that we were going to get the game in if I had to tie a flashlight to the ball – don’t freak out that last part is a joke).

The visitor coach told me that I could have spead things along by not allowing so may timeouts and limiting the time of the time out. Looking back I could not have limited the number of timeouts as each was properly asked for and executed, but I might have been able to limit the amount of time each time out used. How much time do you allow during a timeout?

Bugg