The baseball playoffs have become a date with patience - the patience to stay with a game from start to finish.
That possibly requires a pair of clothespins to keep the eyelids pried open if a game stretches into the wee hours.
Or ample doses of Red Bull to stay wired.
Or a jug of ice water to dump on your head at the appropriate moments.
The interminable nature of the games is exacerbated by the high number of viva la Viagra commercials being aired between innings, which is not an encouraging demographical indication of baseball’s supporters.
The FrankTV ads grate as well. So, too, the Holiday Inn pitches starring Uncle Fester, who also serves as a TBS analyst.
At least that is the analyst said to be Cal Ripken, who looks more like Uncle Fester than Uncle Fester, only without the light bulb sticking out of his mouth.
Baseball celebrates its timelessness and unhurried pace. That merely shows anew that too much of a good thing can be bad.
Baseball might as well ask, “Are you ready for some neuroses?”
Players too often dawdle between pitches, as if the fate of the world hangs in the balance and they need to work up the nerve to deliver a pitch or stand in the batter’s box. It is at these moments that you find yourself mumbling to the television, “What is the worst that possibly can happen? You strike out? You surrender a home run?”
Batters succumb to an assortment of nervous tics and repetitive behaviors, embracing the obsessive-compulsive disorder in them. They cannot begin to think about the next pitch until they have checked the label on their bat exactly 25 times. Pitchers breathe deeply while studying the secret instructions stenciled on their gloves. And so on and so on.
Too many umpires are guilty of having a narrowly defined strike zone, which leads to hitters taking more pitches and a greater number of walks.
All these circumstances bog down a game that used to complete its business in a shade more than two hours in the ’60s.
Bud Selig has been endeavoring to speed up the game since the ’90s. No one is responding, possibly because of the mental distraction of adjusting the cap, uniform collar and belt buckle all in a matter of seconds.
As modern life moves in breakneck fashion, baseball asks its adherents to stop and smell the pine tar.
That is not a bad proposition unless baseball is asking the same question five hours later.
That was the fatiguing reality in Game 2 of the ALCS between the Red Sox and Rays. The game lasted 5 hours and 27 minutes and was not settled until 14 pitchers had been employed.
That is a lot of leisurely walks to the mound, with each capped by a high-level conference involving the pitcher, catcher and either the pitching coach or manager.
All the dead time allows announcers to find great meaning in the most trivial anecdotes, such as how a player came to his batting stance or how Manny Ramirez gets his pants to hang just above the top of his shoes.
The tedium overshadows what has been an otherwise appealing postseason, from Joe Torre managing yet another playoff team to the Cubs being cursed anew by the collective power of the Billy Goat and Steve Bartman.
It overshadows one of the compelling questions of the postseason, which has been: “Didn’t you used to be Josh Beckett?”
Beckett was the Red Sox version of a lock in the postseason. Now he is the holder of an 11.57 ERA in the postseason and the leading cause of stomach indigestion in Red Sox Nation.
Beckett insists his elbow is fine. His diminished fastball says otherwise.
Meanwhile, baseball channels Jane Austen and says: “I cannot be dictated to by a watch.”
Baseball’s sleepy-headed denizens know that sentiment all too well.
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