Tom Werner lost his bid to become Baseball's Tenth Commissioner, but he's not shy about sharing his ideas for speeding up the game, and dropped this one recently ...
“Too many people are leaving games in the sixth and seventh innings because they can’t watch 3 1/2-hour games, so they’re leaving the game at the point where the game should be getting exciting,” Werner told reporters, via the Boston Globe. “You wouldn’t make a 3 1/2-hour movie.”
Three-and-a-half hours is 210 minutes.
The Seven Samurai is 208 minutes.
Gone With the Wind is 220 minutes.
Lawrence of Arabia is 228 minutes.
Actually, he's right: Nobody's making three-and-a-half-hour movies. But I wish someone would. There's nothing wrong with a three-and-a-half hour movie, if that's how long it takes. And sometimes that's just how long it takes.
Which isn't to pick on Werner, because he's absolutely right about the pace of the game being at least a small problem.
I wish someone would make another three-and-a-half-hour movie, and I also wish someone would make the pitchers and batters quit screwing around so much between pitches. There's no good reason for it.
