which is longer?

[Tru_in_Blu]

We're having a negotiation w/ one of our leagues about game fees.

When ASA went to a 1-1 count for slow pitch games, this particular league decided that this would shorten the game too much, so they decided to play 9 inning games. At that point, we did not change the game fee.

Less than 16% of the scheduled games are played as triple-headers on 1 field which basically invokes 1:30 minute time limit per game w/ a hard stop @ 11 PM.

Half the games are double-headers with the first game not allowing a new inning after 1:45, so there is somewhat of a time limit on those. The second games of these DHs currently don't have a hard stop time.

And about a third of games scheduled are played on fields w/o lights, so are either played to completion, called due to darkness, or have the 15-run rule invoked after 7 innings.

We've maintained that the extra 2 innings have caused games to run longer (than 7 innings w/ a 0-0 count), but currently don't have hard data to support that. We'll probably monitor it for a while to get some information.

There are large disparities in the level of play within both of 2 divisions. Two decent teams or 2 poor teams may have competitive games, but upper level against bad teams still need to play to 7 innings to invoke the run rule.

Anyone out there have similar situations or experiences? Any ideas on how to balance things out?

Thanx.