Great lengths
You’ve probably recovered by now from Saturday’s grueling 5-hour 27-minute Game 2 between the Sox and the Rays, assuming you made it to the finish line at all. (Confession: I signed off not long before Mike Timlin made his way out of the bullpen. Beauty sleep, you know.)
But if you’re one of the folks who, three days (and another game) later, still catches yourself in serious need of a midday nap, you’ll probably find yourself nodding in agreement with this column by the Minneapolis Star-Tribune’s Patrick Reusse, who, in a funny and insightful piece, uses that particular marathon to lament the length of baseball games in general.
Reusse relays this anecdote from former Twins manager Tom Kelly, who somehow made it through the whole game:
[Kelly] watched Rays starter Scott Kazmir pitch to the first couple of Red Sox and called out to the next room to his wife:
“Sharon, this is going to be a four-hour game.”
Kelly was certain of this after seeing plate umpire Sam Holbrook arrive at Tropicana Field with a strike zone the size of a shaving kit.
“I felt bad for the umpire,” Kelly said. “I think he’s a pretty good umpire, but he didn’t call strikes early, got trapped and couldn’t get out of it.”
That’s certainly an interesting theory, that an umpire won’t expand his strike zone as the game progresses. But perhaps the most telling nugget comes from longtime player and broadcaster Jim Kaat, who told Reusse:
“The other night, I was watching a game and timed how long it took between each pitch for the hitters to loosen and refasten the Velcro on both batting gloves,” Kaat said. “It averaged eight to 10 seconds. I counted pitches, subtracted the ones that were put in play or ended an at-bat, and came up with 220-something pitches.
“The way I figured it, there were 35 minutes spent adjusting batting gloves.”
Couldn’t have been the Dodgers-Phillies game Kaat was watching — Nomar Garciaparra alone spends that much time fiddling with his gloves.
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