I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset. And when I find my.
Ball in a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreadit Frida Egg, Frida Egg, Frida egg bride.
Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course. Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Podcast. Today's episode is with Barry's for Luga from the Washington Post. Barry writes about baseball a lot. He covers the Washington Nationals as well as, uh, you know, just general baseball topics for the Washington Post. He also covers golf for the Washington Post, so he was at the Masters. He
goes to the major Championships. See Barry out on the golf beat as well it you know, I've been wanting to do this pod for a few weeks now. With the new rules with Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball obviously has undergone a pretty substantial change in the rules
of the game for this year. The intentions of them really were to modernize the game, speed up the game, make the game more appealing to a younger audience, and they've instituted things such as a pitch clock, bigger bases, and really, you know, this is a seismic change for a sport that has held long standing traditions history. You know, it might sound familiar to another sport we talk about a lot on this podcast. Golf. Obviously, pace of play
has come to a head in recent weeks. You know, I think slightly unfairly, I think Patrick Cantley has become the boy for this. There are a lot of slow golfers. Patrick Cantley obviously is in contentional lot. He's one of the best players in the world. So it kind of comes to light. But let's not act like there isn't a hundred slow players on the PGA Tour. Patrick Cantley
is one of those. It does not excuse him, but it also you know, I think one of the one of the big issues in golf is that the governing bodies of the sport, the PGA Tour, the USGA, the RNA, don't do anything to really penalize slow play. We've had two instances really in the last ten years of slow play being penalized. One of them was said Decky Matsiama in the Open Championship when he was eighteen years old
at Mierfield. So if it's not being monitored, what Patrick Cantley is doing is using the rules to the best of his advantage to play the best possible golf. Now, the bigger question it shouldn't be let's crucify Patrick Cantlay and Kim an example. It should be more discussing, Hey, what are the rules of the game. What's important to the game of golf is the ability to make decisions under the gun and read putts quickly A big part of golf, Like, is that an important part of the sport?
I think it is. Others might disagree, But if you think about the product of golf, where it's going, what you want golf to be in the next hundred years, is pace of play important to the product of golf? I don't think you could make an argument that says it isn't you know these rounds where we were approaching five hours with twusome's in golf on weekends. That's not good for the sport. It makes it hard to televise
that there's all these other trickle down effects. So the point of this conversation with Barry and I you know, I think you know I don't like to say, I think it turned out better than I anticipated. I was hopeful that this would be a pod that really translated and that Barry would kind of understand where I was going with it, and he really did and provided a lot of expertise on what baseball and is doing and
how it relates back to golf. You know, I think that this is the type of things that the sport
of golf needs to be looking at. It is a bit unique with the way it's structured, but if you look at every major league sport, whether it's baseball, hockey, football, basketball, they are constantly testing and looking at ways that they can improve their game, improve their product on television because they understand in order to stay relevant, in order to stay popular across generations, you need to make modifications evolutions to the game that appeal to the next generation. Baseball
has done this. One of the things that they looked at was case of their games, and they have done it masterfully with this pitchclock. They're a month into it and really it's been phenomenal for the sport. So, without further ado, we are going to get into this topic. But you know, I think these are there are a
lot of things in here. A lot of things in other sports that they are doing that golf really should look at in terms of modernizing the game and making the professional game more appealing to a wider range of people. All Right, Barry, thanks for coming on. This is gonna be a little bit different podcast than than our normal topic. We're gonna talk. We're gonna talk a lot about baseball. But I promise everybody there's going to be a tie
back to golf here that there's a method to the madness. Barry, you cover both baseball and golf. I'm curious, just off the off the time up, you know, what, what's your favorite aspect about covering each sport? Like is there something that you you know when you're at the Masters that you said sin that you're like, I love covering golf, and and when when baseball season kicks up, like, what are you most excited about?
You know? I mean there's an old saying about sports writing that the the smaller the ball, the better the writing, And so the two smallest balls are baseball and golf. I don't know if that's literally true, but there's certainly if you go through the litany of legendary sports writers like there's the Herbert Warren Wins and the you know, Peter Gammons, and they're they're kind of are baseball and
golf writers. You don't think as much of the you know, literary flair around football necessarily, So I mean from a from a professional like aspiring to write well person, those two sports, for whatever reason, lend themselves to good storylines and good storytelling, and I do like them both, and
i'd like I think I like them both differently. I love the flow of a golf tournament of a major week and you know kind of what to expect on Tuesdays and all the anticipation and and getting into the actual competition, and then you know, yesterday, for instance, I went up to Camding Yards and it's a sunny Wednesday afternoon for a one pm start between the Red Sox and the Orioles, and it feels like the whole summer is stretched out before you you see a nice, clean
baseball game. I love them both kind of, I would say similarly and and differently. There's a different flow, but they also involve a lot of super insightful characters and storytellers, So I love them both.
I imagine baseball like the dog days of you know the famous baseball the dog days like of August? Is that really like the dog days of being a sports writer and being at like game one hundred and twenty or whatever it is on the calendar, and just you know, if your team's not if you if you've got a bad team you're covering, it's gotta be just just an absolute drive to write every day.
For sure, for sure. And that's you know, back when I was the beat writer, I covered the Washington Nationals for their first three and a half seasons, you know, of their existence. Like, yeah, you'd get to you know, you're on a one hundred lost pace and you get to August and you know it's the eighth day of an eleven day road trip, and it's not it's not easy.
I used to try to, you know, walking into the park, say Okay, what's important and what's interesting about this team on this day and try to gear myself up for you know, not making it game one twenty out of one sixty two kind of a silo, but making it a chapter that tells that one hundred and sixty two game game story. And when you find those those threads that hold the season together. It makes it more interesting.
But you do I'm not going to say in those days for the Beat writers that it's not a slog. It can you can love the game and it can be a slog in late August when you can't quite see the finish line yet, you know there's there's still quite a bit to go for a season that might be going nowhere.
That that's good advice. That's that's great advice. I might take it to heart this week with the Mexico Open with one one player in the top ten, me wondering what are we doing having this event right? You know, it's just a chapter. It's a chapter in the season long book. You know we need we need William mcgert in the field for that for that chapter. It makes
it more interesting. So to get into what I wanted to talk about here today, you know, baseball has gone through some I think, I think pretty major rules changes for the year. There are a few changes they aren't you know that obviously everybody's talking about the pitch clock. So the pitch clock is is the big change. There's now a timer that between pitches players, you know, the X amount of times the pitcher can throw the ball. And anytime the batter's got to be ready in that
time frame. Obviously that that was untimed before it could be however long you really wanted to throw a pitch. You have bigger bases, and the shift has been eliminated. So I got those are the three big ones, right. What I'd love to hear about a little bit is like, from your view, what were the prevalent trends in the game before these changes, and you know kind of where what was like if you could zoom out a little, what was what was happening to baseball the last five to ten years.
So in addition to games getting longer, just in terms of enduring what last year was a three hour and four minute game, there's been a real imbalance in baseball over the last decade. Teams have fetishized velocity from pitchers and really sought to develop it over all other qualities. And that's really led to a few things. What was you know, when we were growing up, what were the big narratives about a baseball game? Who's pitching that night? That was kind of defined what the matchup was going
to be. Was it going to be two aces against each other? Was a lopsided matchup, and the job of those pitchers in the seventies and the eighties was to finish the game and shake the catcher's hand at the end.
And what the job of the starting pitcher has become is to throw as hard as you can for as long as you can, and we'll come get you in the fourth, fifth, maybe sixth inning, and we're going to hand the ball over to a series of dudes that throw ninety eight and have ridiculous sliders, and they're going to go all out. And the only way the offense could counter was to swing. You know, there were no
controlled swings. We're swinging up, we're swinging for launch angle, we're swinging to hit the ball out of the park. So what happened was you had strikeouts going up every year since two thousand and five, new record every single year. But also homer is starting to go up and no action. Like I always say, like, what's more interesting in baseball?
A solo home run where you watch the ball go out and the guy jogs around or somebody you know, a run around first and a ball into the right field corner and now you have to look at the right fielder and the cutoff man, and then the third base coach, and is the runner is. You know, there's five or six things that are going on over a longer speriod period of time in that play where the
home run is is is boring. So that's a long witted way of saying that all of those things had the game out of whack, and then it was taking longer, too long, and those you know, four hour postseason games that no ten year old kid on the East Coast could see the end of, you know, really threatening to kill the game. So change was needed. Change was necessary. They made some really fundamental changes and it's already having a big impact.
Yeah. I think people would push back obviously immediately on the homer being less interesting, But when when you think about it, like, what makes a homer special is when they're scarce, when you know they aren't the prevalent way people score runs, right, Like, it's I think it's really similar. And I don't want to get too into the comparisons to golf, but with a long drive, right, everybody says like, oh, they're super long drives, but if everybody hits the long drive,
what is a long drive? Right? I remember growing up obviously I grew up in a Bridge era in the ninety I mean, I remember early nineties baseball, and then I was a Cubs. I grew up a Cubs fan, so I had the Sammy Sosid Mark McGuire steroid fest. I think that's okay to say on a golf podcast where everybody's launching homers, but it was still like, you know, you saw like the metamorphos of you talked about the Orioles games of a Brady Anderson going from a nine home run guy.
To fifty home run.
Yeah, when all of a sudden everybody's hitting thirty to fifty homers. It's not of a crazy phenomenon. It's almost like a diminishing return, right is the home run when there's a couple, you know, when there might be one a game. It's really an amazing spectacle that home run. But the idea of manufacturing runs and the tension that comes with having to really work for runs, I think is I think that's what people fall in love with
every playoff. In the playoffs, where I feel like runs become a little bit more scarce than in the regular season. I don't know if that's this is just somebody that usually watches baseball, but runs get a little bit more scarce. And that's kind of what the lure of baseball is is when you have to, you know, generate the runs rather than just, you know, they just appear.
Yeah, And I mean, I'll just use that game that I went to yesterday, the Oriols one sixty two of the Red Sox. The Red Sox had one of the runs on a solo homer, but the Orioles they had two sacrifice bunts to move guys just from first and second to second and third. They I'm not going to argue that the sacrifice fly is a particularly interesting play, but at least if there's gonna be a play at the plate, like, there's some tension there. The guy's setting up,
you've got places to turn your head and different. You know, again the third base coach is he gonna send him? What's the timing here? So the Oriols win a game six to two in which you know, they had twelve hits, that's action each one of those hits is you know, I think there's more tension. And I don't want to sound like some sort of home run fascist, but like there's more tension in a single to write with a guy on first and you're evaluating, Okay, is this guy
gonna go for thirty? Is there going to be a play at third? There's just there's more action, and then you take what we're really here to talk about is the pitch clock, meaning that the next play comes more quickly. There's just more reason to be engaged all the time. You don't lose track of how many outs are there, how you know what's the count. You're you're more locked in because you have to be here. You're gonna miss stuff. You know.
A great way to synthesize this would be if, as you were talking about that, I was thinking about going back to my youth when I try what I keep score, you know, manually keep score, and how simple solo home runs are versus when you have a guy on first, you have sacrifice, like all the little intricacies of of
keeping that perfect scorecard. You know, you know when that happens, and you know that it's it's funny because like you think about like a guy going to third, like you signifying all that while you're keeping score, would be like a perfect way to visualize what you're talking about, like the interest in the game so.
I'm gonna grab from my trash, uh the score my scorecard from yesterday.
Okay, wait, this might be the video video cutout right.
Yeah, so but anyway, you're you're totally right, Like you probably can't see this, but that's this is the orial side of the board and all this stuff where the runs are scored and there's a sack here and I keep track of which which hit place in the lineup moves the guys over, and how did you know? That? To me tells a more interesting story then then if we go to the Red Sox, like here's the solo homers, Like, okay, yeah, let us let off the inning with the solo homer,
it's just like a block. Like we may be getting too deep in the in the weeds. But I'm sure there are nerds who listen to this podcast and and there's nothing nerdier than than doing that and believing that it it tells a story about the game.
Well, I think that you could say the same thing with with golf, right it's you know, when you have to hit more shots, that's just like what we're talking
about here. And I didn't mean to get into the comparisons directly, but like you know, when when players are forced to hit more shots, just like there, when there are more possible outcomes in in baseball, you could bunt, you could try and hit and run, you could try and you know you want to hit to the left side of the enfield, you know, or the right side of the enfield to move the right side of the enfield, move a guy from second to third, Like you know,
when you have these these more varied outcomes in golf, it's okay should I lay up on a par five, like what we saw with the changes that Augusta National has made, for example, where it's not a foregone conclusion if I hit the fairway that I am going for the green in two, like the idea that there was even a thought in players heads, even though they all ended up going for it again, but like even though there was a thought, there was discourse before the week.
It made it more interesting because all of a sudden, when they're they hit the fairway, there's the tension of the walk to the ball. Are they going to go for it? Yeah?
And I think I was absolutely thinking about the team move back at thirteen and Augusta when you were talking about that, because like it wasn't even just that there wasn't a thought that they were going to go for it before. It was like they were going to go for it with an aid iron, right, Like it's just it's pitch and putt to some Now is there an excitement and somebody rolling in an eagle putt at number thirteen on August on a Sunday. Yeah, absolutely, I'm not
going to deny that. But like it matters that they're standing over you know, in some cases a fore iron over that creek and into you know, a green that suddenly is not as receptive because the launch, you know, the angle it's coming in is different. Like you want variety, and if you put the home run with the long drive and the long drive leading to just you know, having a wedge in and spinning it back, that's not as interesting as I think for nerds around the sport.
And I would equate this with baseball too, like all the stuff that I was talking about earlier, the stuff that's actually action that's not involved in a home run. It's very very similar to Okay, I just hit a three hundred and thirty four yard drive and now I have a wedge in and that's an easy birdy.
And I think the thing about it is just like homer's right, Homers, like what we're talking about, homers are are more interesting when they're a little bit more of a feat. Right. An eagle on a par five is way way more compelling, way more exciting when it is
more of a feat. When there's less eagles of like scored on a hole, that eagle is more exciting and interesting, just the same same way a birdie on a on a tough part part four, par three is is more interesting than a you know, a birdie on a par three that's giving them away like you know, free candy. Right,
those birdies, those become more significant, more relevant. So back to the baseball stuff, you know, before these changes were made, what were the complaints that kind of were bubbling within within the game before anything was done.
So I think, you know, if you go to the velocity and the imbalance between the pitcher and the hitter, that that people couldn't really identify that necessarily. But the root of all evil here was velocity. But that built a longer game, and worse than the length of the game was the amount of inaction in the middle of the game when a pitcher could take as much time as he wanted to take deep breaths to walk off the back of the mound to get the rosen ban
bag and dry his hand. He's gathering strength again to throw another ninety nine mile an hour fastball to a hitter who might say, you know what, Actually, I'm not feeling it right now. I'm going to step out. So what they've done with this pitch clock, which is fifteen seconds between pitches on a normal scenario, is the brilliant part about it is they have eliminated nothing that you wanted to see in the first place. They have only
cut fat from the game. And it's visceral. You can feel it when you're watching a game on TV or you're at a game. The ball is going back to the pitcher and he is reporting to the rubber and he's getting himself set and the hitter has to be in there at seven seconds on the clock or it's a violation against him. And they're doing it again and the result I mean. I asked Major League Baseball to send me this morning the updated numbers through yesterday, through
twenty eight days of the season. Last year, games were three hours and five minutes long. On average, they settled at three hours and four minutes over the course of the entire season. Through twenty eight days of this season, they're two hours and thirty six minutes long. That is twenty eight minutes a game shorter, essentially a half an hour on average shorter. Take that over the course of the season, and that's eighty hours of only fat that
you have cut out of baseball. And you may have East Coast kids who can turn on their team at seven and watch them until nine thirty and still get to bed at an hour when they're not bleary eyed in the morning. It's just it's a fundamental, fundamental change to not just the length of the game, but the pace of the game.
Yeah, I think that it's it's it's so important, right obviously, Like it is, like you said things that nobody wanted to watch, right, Like you can maybe make an argument that the time builds tension. That could be one thing you could make an argument, but like, is it noticeably different between fifteen seconds and a minute or two minutes?
Yeah, well, you talk about building the tension. Like I remember, and this was years ago. I would say it was two thousand and six or two thousand and seven, I was primarily a baseball I was a baseball report and in the postseason, you know, these games were the Red Sox were taught to like take as many pitches as you can follow them back, like have these incredibly long
at bats. And I remember doing a story on that at that time and talking to a television producer, you know who produced the games for Fox or ESPN or whoever it was at the time, saying, we have to have this whole dance where okay, here's the picture, here's the hitter, now it's the manager, here's a nervous fan. Now we're back to the picture. And you're what do you do? You know, yes, there's drama in doing that,
but there's no action. And if you repeat that kind of scenario, you know, a hundred times a night, that's just that's rough, and that is it's not it's not action. And I think if you you know, with golf, the good thing about a golf telecast is you can move
away from it. Either's one hundred and forty four players or a hundred fifty six players or whatever, obviously not all out there at the same time, but half that out there at roughly the same time, you've got choices and you don't have to cut out or you don't
have to just sit there and watch the waiting. But there's no question that it impacts the play the experience of anybody on site watching it when you're when you're walking around for a five hour round where you're watching Patrick Cantley, you know, or yeah, right, no, it matters. It totally matters.
Well, I think, like the thing with golf telecast that I noticed is that the problem you know, and this is where the pitch clock's brilliant, right, and like the problem with the with the golf telecast is that they have they go to pre shot routine and they have no clue when that pre shot routine is going to be over right, so you might be with the player for you see it. Sometimes where they're on a player, they cut away from the player and come back to
the player. Sometimes they stay on the player and it's like we're watching this for ninety seconds. If all of a sudden they had a finite amount of time, you know, and I know that we can talk about implementation. I want to talk about this a little bit later, but if they have a finite amount of time, all of a sudden, it cures one of like golf fans who watch on TV's biggest issues with the sport show the
more shots. Right, if you know when players are hitting and where it is in the in the shot clock, all of a sudden, you can go to them like you have like you have markers. It makes covering the sport from a telecast standpoint way easier, as I imagine
baseball like baseball does different shots. You know, announcers like one of the things I admire so much, and I think golf needs more of the baseball announcer, Like you know, I'll never forget like Pat Hughes on radio telecast and Chicago talking about like where baseball's were made, like in the dead time, like it's spanning like two innings, I'm talking about the process of making a baseball Like I don't know why that memory sticks in my head for
fifteen minutes. But like now I've imagined the sport's probably a lot easier to telecast, like the announcers have to be like way more locked in.
Yeah, and I do think you're right about the golf telecasts, Like you know, those producers are super super talented, and I think like, for the most part, I really enjoy golf telecasts, even though I agree with you that you know that the main complaint is show more shots. But if you if you have a hard clock on a guy and you don't have to make if you're a producer, you don't have to make that choice of oh my god, when is this guy going to pull the trigger? You
know when the trigger is going to be pulled. You've got your screens up here and you know what's going on elsewhere. It's a lot I'd never been in that role. I have to imagine would be a lot easier to plan and have the end result be over the course of X hours we've seen why more golf shots like that? That would be very, very meaningful to the to the television product for sure.
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to Barry. So, you know, as we we've gotten into the weeds, you know this hasn't gone as as planned, but I kind of want to keep moving this conversation along because we could we could talk about this for hours, I think. But so to sum up kind of baseball in a state, you know, people had felt like some of the intricacy of the game had been lost. The game had fundamentally changed, you know, in the sense of what skills were recorded, rewarded and thrived. And maybe not
everybody agreed for the better. I imagine that there were some that said the game is better and healthier, and I want to get into some of that. And the games were getting longer and longer. It was taking longer to play than ever really before. Would you say that sums up kind of the main thesis of what was going on in baseball.
Yeah, I mean, if you want to distill it down to maybe one sentence or one catchphrase, it was a lot more time for a lot less action. So I mean, you take we can if you want to get really into the weeds, like batting average is not a really good way to evaluate an individual player, but league batting average is. You know, what does an average major league hitter hit is a way to tell how much action there is in the game, and that had dipped down
last year. Two I'm going to get the number not exactly right, but to around two forty like in in when I was growing up in the eighties, a two forty hitter was like, you better be a really good defender to stay in the in the lineup because you're not doing your pulling your weight offensively. When that's the average hitter across the league, that tells you that the ball's not in play enough, there's not enough enough action.
And then you couple that with okay, all that action is spread out over three hours rather than contained to two and a half. That was a major, major impetus for the rule changes. And one of the things you didn't mention in rule changes that is important as well is they've limited pickoff attempts for when you're throwing for a pitcher throwing to a base, you can do it twice the third time. Uh, it's it's a buck if
you don't get them that. That, along with the larger bases, has stolen base attempts up and when you when you Major League Baseball did a survey I think it was two or three years ago that they didn't widely publicize, but they asked fans, what are your more most exciting were the plays you get most excited about? Stolen base attempts was up there. Great defensive plays was up there, the triple was up there. I'm probably forgetting something, but
it was not. It was not the home run. It was these things that involve athleticism, anticipation, that kind of excitement they've started to instill. We don't know the full summer play out of Like is batting average going to rise over the course of the summer. It hasn't changed, you know, Guys still throw one hundred and they still use a lot of relievers all that kind of stuff, but they've they've started to get at least the running
game going again, and that matters. It totally matters in your enjoyment of a specific play, a specific inning, a specific game.
Yeah, I think, let's say would be said with golf, with with law everybody, you know, what's the most exciting shot in golf? What are the most memorable shots in golf? They're usually chip shots or approach shots. You know, Yeah, there's a coup, there's a handful of drives, and those are like when you drive a green, you know, and you know that if you you know, like, but for the most part, the predominant shot that you think about, like if you remember iconic shots. A lot of them
are approach shots or chip shots. So how did how did this the rules changes get started? And like what was like the kind of undercurrent of this whole, this big change that happened this year. And I think to your point about the rules changes, like you're not going to see the big impact of these rules changes at baseball until you can zoom out from like five or ten years and see where the game goes, because it takes a while for you know, strategies and different things to change personnel too.
Right, Well, I mean, I think it's also again probably similar to the discussions going in golf if you have a slower product in a you know, being played to generations that are used to rapid fire in whatever they want, you know, whether it's social media or texting or whatever. Kids are not sitting on the couch being like Okay, I'm going to see one pitch every ninety seconds or whatever. Like that's not compelling in any way. So you're you're you're dealing with a sport that has an aging fan
base to begin with. You have to find a way to replenish the fans on the young end and get that demographic and have a future for the sport and have it be something that even resembled the national past time. I mean, I think it baseball has seated that spot a long time ago, but it just wasn't sustainable down the path that it was going. And it took smart people at Major League Baseball and with the players Union
to say we got to do something here. So when I think we both admires theo Epstein, who was a formal general manager with the Red Sox and the Cobs, he became a point person for MLB on thinking through these problems and saying, Okay, what what can we do here to restore some of the balance between pitcher and hitter, to instill more action into the game so that it's moving at a faster pace and there's more exciting stuff
to watch. And you come up with a pretty interesting package that they you know, they were able to test in the in the minors. And I remember hearing the first data points when the pitchclock was used in a couple of minor league leagues a couple of years ago, where they were saying, oh, the game time is down to two twenty eight here whatever, I'm picking a number. The game time's down to two and a half hours in this league is single a league in California that
we tried it, It's just made this huge difference. I was like, that can't possibly be true. Like, if that's true, why aren't we doing it right now? And it's after less than a month of the pitchclock being in the majors. I mean, I think it'll be mid season before the wide percentage of the fan base is saying isn't saying what's up with this pitchclock? They're saying, how did we not have a pitch clock for the last twenty years?
Yeah? I mean, you know, I haven't been excited for a baseball season for a while. And part of that, you know, my Cubs are we might be on the up and up, but it's been a rough a couple of years. But I mean, like I was with my Dad's a huge baseball man, and I was with him on spring break right before you know, uh, the season started, and like we were like talking baseball and how like how excited? You know? And it was opening day and
I had I turned baseball on. I was like, I couldn't wait to watch baseball, you know, because of this clock. I wanted to see what was going on? And I think like the thing that golf and baseball share here is like you talked about the pace, this younger generation pace, Like what do you do if you know NBA playoffs are on right now? When when a game goes to commercial, what's what's your first inclination if you're sitting on the couch, what do you do?
You go and get a drink, you go to the bathroom, I don't know.
I mean you look at your phone, you do something, or.
You click to something else, Like your attention is distracted.
Right, So it's just the same thing with golf. It's like if you have ninety seconds between a pitch or ninety seconds between a shot, it's extremely likely that somebody's not gonna watch shot because they're going to get distracted and do something else, right, And that's the idea, is giving people a clock to measure against. Like, Okay, I
know I have to pay attention. Here is a fascinating it just like it makes sense and like what you said, like you get into it, you get into the miners what they're doing it, and it's like, why why haven't we been doing this? What were the main detractors to these rules changes, saying and like, who who did they represent?
Well? I mean, I think you know people who romanticize about baseball, and I think that the two most romanticized sports from people within them are golf and baseball. People they there are people in my job as sports writers who I think in both of these sports almost see themselves as protectors and promoters of the game. No, we don't. We've never had a clock in baseball. Baseball's beauty is in fact that it is untimed, and you'll be stripping
away a fundamental element of the game. Now, was that over romanticized and was it outdated because of what has happened and the way pitchers and hitters were manipulating the fact that they were not timed. Yeah, I would argue absolutely. And you're not in either of these sports. Are you going to please everybody if you make changes? I mean it's there's that debate with the ball in golf as well, right, Like, you know, are we would if the ball is real? Back?
Are we stripping these guys of you know, these more athletic players of something that they've worked hard to attain. We can you know, that's a totally different path that I know, you guys talk about a lot, but there are in any of it. There are people who would say, it's the sport is going to evolve. We should allow it to evolve naturally, not by putting artificial implement that's in that say, okay, now we have a structure that
we've never had before. And I would argue that the one change that they did that I think more people are queasy about than even the pitch clock is the banning of shifts, because the argument would be, there's never been assigned defensive positions by rule other than the pitcher has to stand on the rubber and the catcher has to be in the catcher's box. The other seven guys could all stand in left field if they thought that was the most.
Effect, not have a catcher. It would be a bad idea, But you like.
That would be bad, right. But the point is, I think the thing that people are uneasy about there is no have the offense. Part of this evolution should be can't be offense? Figure out how to beat three infielders to the right side of second base, that kind of thing. So I get that debate, but as a package has had to happen because the sport was killing itself essentially by what it had become.
Yeah, I mean baseball's undergone ball deadening too, right, yeap, I mean did now that question? This is I didn't plan on asking this question. But do you feel like that when they deadened the ball, that athletic, powerful baseball players were had things stripped away from them?
No? No, no, no. And and in fact, you know, you go back to something you said very originally like homers are more interesting when they're less prevalent, right, Like, so if it took more to hit a homer, then then that's fine. The other thing about the you know, athleticism.
One thing that shifting did, uh, was minimize athleticism. Because if if you've got three guys to the right of second base and there's a hard ground ball over there, you know, Ryan Sandberg doesn't have to die for it because he's got somebody playing behind him in short right field. You're like, okay, we've got this covered. There's less exciting defensive plays. I mean, again, theof seen in a conversation
I had with him probably a couple of years ago. Now, put it this way, we have better athletes than we've ever had playing this sport and we are limiting the ways that they can show their athleticism. So you know, the same could be said, uh. I think for for golf, you want things to be rare. Rare means exciting.
Well, how did players feel about it? Like, what was there the general discourse with players? Obviously they don't have as uh I would say, outside of an influence as UH as golfers do, where they they are the owners of the sport and the UH and the players, right there is a little bit different setup. But what was the what was the general feeling of players?
Well, I mean there was you know, some pushback and some reluctance because it's hard for players. I mean, one way that baseball players are similar to golfers is in a way they're all their individual corporations. Right. Yes, they're a member of a team and the team's success matters
and that's part of their legacy. But in a in a vacuum, in a selfish way, their job, over the course of their very finance career is to earn as much as they can, and so part of that is like what is my routine, what is my routine in leading into a game, and what was my routine in that game very analogous to golf, Like your pre shot routine is really important to you. My pre pitch routine before I throw a pitch is very important to me. If you're fundamentally changing that, I might I might be
really reluctant. I would give. And I think the gives players an enormous amount of credit for not complaining left and right. You have there been individual instances where you know, how can how can that be? Like I get this penalty, you know, a ball four when I was fractionally late on something. Yes, and there will be those going going forward. But in general, because they had an entire spring to get used to it, and spring training in baseball is
essentially seven weeks, the buy in has been tremendous. And even guys joke about like, well, you know, it's kind of nice being home at nine forty five and not ten forty five after a night game. There are they I think they can see that they haven't been so disturbed in their pre pitch or pre shot routine that it's fundamentally affecting how they do their jobs. And there are ancillary benefits like they have more time with their kids or whatever.
Well, I mean, you're talking eighty hours of like not competing is extraordinarily that's like very relevant. Well and in terms of like how you're gonna feel and mentally in the body, Like the mental aspect of being on field for thirty extra minutes is extreme. Like anybody that's played competitive golf, like you, you feel a difference when you get off the course when it's a five hour competitive round versus a four and a half hour competitive round,
like that stuff. And if you do it, you know, four days in a row, just like baseball, Just like golf, like if you have four games in a row, two extra hours of that intense focus, like you know, both of them, I think people would say are not like
the most physically grueling sports. Sure do you need to be physically tuned to play them, but like they are not like basketball or tennis, where you're just like holy cow, like I can't believe the endurance, you know, but they they they have a mental aspect of them that those other sports might not carry as much in terms of like the just the anguish in the amount of focus that's required in short bursts.
So I also think that that so there's the totality of what you're talking about, like the extra half hour adding on to an extra half hour the next night, adding on to an extra half hour in the third game of the series or whatever. But there's also the possibility and probability of losing focus in between pitches, like, Oh, I'm oh, it's going to be you know, seventy five seconds before this guy's what I'm looking in the stands.
I'm like, that's a real thing. You see, Guys have to be more engaged on every pitch because every pitch is coming more quickly. I think that there's a and this is probably down a rabbit hole. But there's a sports psychology element to all of this that plays to both golf and baseball, where you know an individual players in either sports, sports psychologists is saying you control what you can control, and what you can control is your preparation for not only that day, but for each and
every event within that day. That I think, it's inarguable, has contributed to slow play in either of those sports. Because I'm the pitcher, I'm in control. I'm not going to do this until i'm ready. I'm a golfer, I'm not going to stand over this ball until i'm very clear in how I'm visualizing this shot. I've sorted out all the variables and now I'm in control of my swing that contributes to longer processes period across the board whatever you're trying to execute.
Yeah, I completely agree with this in I think that's like one of the failings up until nowt of baseball and golf is not rewarding the skill of somebody who's able to a process information quickly and able to be get themselves mentally ready to hit a shot or throw a pitch or taken a bat in a short amount of time. That is a talent and a skill and one that should be rewarded because that's a huge differentiator right mentally being that player. I always use this comparison.
I saw KVV Kevin Bev Balkenberg use this as in an article he wrote about slow play on No Laying Up dot com. But the idea of like what made Tom Brady the greatest quarterback of all time was his ability to process a defense in a split second, be able to read a defense, understand his progressions, and throw the pass faster. You know, there's a load of people who had more physical traits for physical attributes like every year, Like, what's the big discourse this year with the NFL draft
this this week this weekend is can Anthony Richardson? Like? Is he he has these physical traits? But can he go through the progressions? Can he run an offense? Can he handle the new Like when you remove all the time, if you remove the pass rush and the need to throw the ball and go through these progressions quickly, all of a sudden, Tom Brady might not have been the greatest quarterback of all time. That is important in sports. That's the same thing with why is Lebron great? Like
Lebron like you watch him at age? What is he thirty nine or thirty eight now? And you watch him like just like they just get into the exact thing they want all the time, and he just hunts and picks apart defenses. It's not quite as prevalent as it used to be, but his ability to just and it's in a twenty four second shot clock. That's what makes NBA offense so incredible is the finite amount of time that they have to run the offense. How much different would the NBA look if there was no time?
You know, well, you'd have a four corners offense which you used to have, like, Okay, we have an eight point lead with ten minutes left, Like why in the world would we shoot, Like we don't have to. I mean, so, just to bring it back to golf real quickly, competitive decisiveness and decision making in a specified amount of time should be rewarded. At the Masters this year, on Sunday walk in the final group, rom and Kopka Brooks hits
his drive at a way left into the trees. I'm almost positive this, yeah, And so I was probably with KVB standing there on the left side of the fairway and he's got this evaluation to make and he's gonna have to punch back out right. It's a birdie hole. This is a disastrous things ramist and to turn the momentum.
And I just remember he got in there, he looked at it, he talked to his caddy, he went through the thing, and I'm, you know, up ahead a little bit but trying to keep an eye into the trees, and all of a sudden, the ball's coming out, and
I was like, oh my goodness. Like he went in there, he evaluated all the information that he needed to evaluate, and he made a decision and he whacked it out and it was a good like you know, whatever he made par I think, but it why, you know, we can I'm not gonna list the players who would have gone in there and spent ten minutes, but it's a longer list that would have gone in there and then spent you know, seventy five seconds and it and it moved the game. It was it was I just remember
being struck by Wow. No one does things that fast that that should be, that should be more the norm than than the opposite.
A couple of years ago, I you know, when Bryson was being accused of slow play. I went to the US Open in a time I spent like a Friday timing every every player in the group for nine holes and it was him, JT, Kevin Kissinger, and Kevin Kissinger was incredible. I mean, like, you know, kind of in the vein of Matt Fitzpatrick where he was just ready to hit after you know, if he was the second player to hit, he was hitting in like twelve seconds. You know, Bryson was always and he's done a great
job of speeding up. I think that you know, you have to give him props. He has sped up his pace of play from this moment, but he was he was taking one and a half two minutes to hit a shot every every time. But what I noticed, everybody's slow at the green. And that's perhaps where skill is most would be most rewarded of, Like I can read a green quickly and be confident and stand over a shot.
And if you think about where golf like, you know what happened with the Masters to go back to this, and I think this is where it really started to bubble. This discourse is bubbled and blown up to where you know, we're getting to p point where I don't think, like golf like people are going to stand for this for much longer with how you know, like something has to happen eventually because you know, Brooks and Rom are putting
on they're getting to the green. I saw like John Rom's caddy was visually upset on the fifteenth green about Patrick Cantley and Victor Hovelin and to can't lay in Hovelin's credit like they were waiting on fifteen. Yes, you know this, this this was a This wasn't just a Patrick cantlay problem. Is he a slow player? Absolutely, But there are probably one hundred slow players on the PGA Tour. So anyways, he goes to the green at like, uh, Rom,
they're on the fifteenth green. Those guys are walking to the sixteenth green. They're on the sixteenth green and they're still putting on the fifteenth green. They finished putting. Rom obviously has opened up this lead at this point. Kepkaz like looks just like flabbergast when he's on the sixteenth tee. They walk to the sixteenth te not a close walk, I mean it's forty fifty yards. They get there, Rob goes to the bathroom, comes back. Patrick Cantley, who's out
still has not hit his putt. Yes, and that's just that can't happen.
It can't happen. It can't happen. And if you take I mean, I think this debate in golf can be applied at all levels, like the we've both played with people who watch whoever else is in the group do whatever they're doing with their shot, and then they begin their preparation for their shot. Okay, what's my yard? Like just stop it stop get ready, like, don't that's happening over there, don't worry about it. Yeah, I love playing with the regular people that I play with, who I know.
If they're having a problem an issue, they're they're solving it quickly and not worried about where I'm on the left side of the fairway. We're all your look across, Okay, he's not ready, I'm playing right now. Why can't Why can't that be the flow of a professional round of golf? And that's from t to green? Whatever is it hard to read a pot? And like should they take some time? You don't want to have guys just like getting up there and doing stuff they're not prepared for, because that
wouldn't bring out the best performance. But it's it is out of control. And the example that you you used at fifteen and sixteen is a.
Good one in your in you're just having watched this baseball and play out and covering golf. You know, what would you like to see golf do? What do you you know? Obviously they have the distance thing is on the table. It looks like it's gonna happen at some you know events, which obviously will relieve pace of play. If less guys can get home into they're less driveable part fours that will relieve pace of play. But you know what, what else do you think the baseball should be looking at.
That's a really interesting question because I'm still kind of processing the first month of pretty unprecedented. I mean, you have to go back to nineteen sixty eight when they lowered I'm sorry, sixty nine, after the year the pitcher. In sixty eight they made a uniformly lower mound because pitchers had too great an advantage and there was less
action in the game. There's so much to digest with what's happened over you know, only the first twenty eight days of the season that what next steps might be are a little bit hard to envision. They are trying in an independent league something called the double hook rule, which would incentifize teams to leave their starters in longer.
The idea is, if you pull your starter before he's completed five innings, you lose the designated hitter and the pitch has to hit in that that's the pitcher spot.
So that would be amazing.
It's really interesting. Way to get back to that thing I was talking about at the very beginning of what's the narrative of any day of baseball is like, Okay, who's pitching? If that person's not going to be you know, there's this whole idea of the Tampa Bay Rays and other teams using openers, essentially starting a pitcher who's they know is only going to pitch two innings and building a game plan of guys that are only going to pitch one or one or two innings. That takes away
that starting pitcher narrative completely. Maybe that double hook rule is the next thing that you you stick in there to Again, you're not trying to do to get to the game to a place that it's never been before. You're actually trying to restore it to how it always was played. I mean, if you Tom Boswell, who had my job at the Washington Post for ever and ever
and ever and covered baseball and go as well. He's retired, but he wrote a column going into this baseball season after having watched spring training games saying, essentially, this isn't new. The pitch clock isn't making the game something we haven't seen before. It's actually restoring it to the way it was played forty and fifty years ago, which is refreshing and which I think would be perfect for golf, because you know, Jack Nicholas didn't stand over a shot for
ninety seconds or two minutes. He evaluated, stepped up and executed it to the best of visibility in that in that moment. That should be rewarded somehow.
Yeah, And I think something that you just hit on is all these all these leagues, with the exception of golf. I mean, the NBA is constantly experimenting in it's like lower level leagues, you know they are, and the idea that MLB is now in this era of experimentation. You know, the NFL changed his rules regularly. The only sport that's just like kind of just no, we're not doing anything.
We aren't going to try and evolve at this point, you know, and any any of the only evolution that has been introduced has been met with sharp, you know, detractors criticism is golf.
And I think when you strip away, I mean, I talked earlier about the protectors of the game in both baseball and golf, and I feel like, for whatever reason those sports have, they have such a reverence for their history, right like in baseball even more than golf, the numbers of their history and anything that could alter what sixty one homers by Roger Marris meant in nineteen sixty one or any of those, you know, the career home run mark that you debate, like, is Hank Aaron still the
all time greatest because Bonds was on steroids. Blah blah blah. Anything that threatens that kind of sanctity of that history is seen as evil. I do think if there's a relationship between the two sports and the problems that they have with an aging audience and an audience that, you know, a younger audience that wants to see more and more action, is baseball has now stripped away some of that reverence for this is the way that we've always done things.
Therefore we will always do them going forward. Golf might want to look over there and say, Okay, they had a similar They honored their history and valued their history
in a similar way. They've done some pretty radical things, and they that radical stuff involved buy in from all parties, reluctant by in in some cases, but people that have come around and understand it, couldn't we do the same in the name of saving our sport, not just at the profession level, but at the recreational level and getting more people involved, because you know, we all make those
evaluations when we're gonna go play golf. Am I gonna play on a Saturday morning when I know it's going to kill you know, I'm not going to be home until two or three because this round is going to take five hours. Like that's a real life evaluation that has nothing to do with whether TV producers watching Patrick Cantlay stand over a ball for two minutes, like, but they're related.
Yeah, I mean absolutely, it's uh. I think one of the things like that's interesting about golf is I think the people that hold the most reverence for the history of the game are the ones that want to change the most.
That could be true, I mean it, and you think about it, like because whatever, like Jack Nicholas and Gary Player and Arnold Palmer when he was alive and now Tom Watson. They do the honorary shot thing at the Masters, and they come in for a press conference like early that Thursday morning, and of course they're they're asked state
of the game questions because their their opinion matters. If you go back to the thirteenth hole, you know they're talking about, well, we're evaluating whether to hit four iron into that green. We would like these guys to have that same evaluation. It's you know, eagling it with eight iron in your hand is not the same. So you're right, like the historical figures are hyper aware that the challenge is not the same that they faced both on a day to day basis and a shot by shot basis.
Restoring that would be would be good for everybody.
I think last question and we'll get you out of here. Thank you so much for the time. But do you think a pitch clock or a shot clock is feasible for golf?
I think you have to you. Instead of phrasing it that way, I think it should be phrased why is it not feasible? Like why can we not be aggressive in a address identifying and addressing a problem that is affecting the game from the top level to the entry level, and that includes players who young players who are really
into golf. If you're lucky enough to have hooked somebody on the sport and they're watching a round of golf and they see player A, B, and C on TV taking all this time, evaluating all these things and not stepping up there and decisively hitting a shot, what are they going to do? You mimic? You know, if you're a left handed hitter as a kid, you're mimicking Ken Griffy's stance, right like you you learn from your heroes.
If you're learning that taking however much time you want is rewarded or not penalized, then there's the train has left. It's it's it's impossible to stop. I think golf should be asking the question, we know we have this problem, we have to take steps to reel it in. For you know, we have to figure out logistically what does a shot clock mean? How do we penalize people? How do we implement it? Rather than saying well, it's so it would be so hard, I think you got to get more aggressive about it.
Yeah, if you if you're worried about solving a problem and the solution being too hard, is you're thinking about it completely the wrong way. And I think, like you know, important anecdote to what you said, you know, the distance debate. A lot of what's fueled some of the something needs to change is looking at college golf and seeing, wow, these kids are longer than the PGA tour, Like this
is a problem that is going to continue. You hear Mike Wan talk about this, right, you know, it is just going to keep becoming a bigger problem because the kids are longer and longer. The same thing for pace to play. If you go to a college event, it is so slow. If you go to a junior event, so slow. And it is just become going to continue to become a bigger problem with the sport because it is a self perpetuating problem, and.
You're you're in there, somewhere in there, you're stifling creativity and individuality because you're creating these robotic you know, go back to baseball. If you're fetishizing velocity in baseball, it's the same thing as fetishizing length in golf. It takes some you know, finesse. Pitchers are not They don't get a Jamie Moyer doesn't get a shot anymore. Greg Maddox, you know who I'm sure you loved. I mean, does he not get a shot? He's not valued the same way. He doesn't get the chance to.
What about Mark Burley, Yeah, exactly, the best best player a lot. When you saw Mark Burley is on the mound, You're just like, ah, this is awesome. It's gonna be like a two hour game.
Hour and fifty five minutes and he's gonna allow three hits and this is gonna be awesome. There's there's fun in that, and there's creativity and individuality, and it's not just you know, some six' five broad shouldered kid from the prairie who's thrown ninety nine with a ninety two mile an hour slider that dives at the bottom of the.
Zone it's the same thing As, okay everybody hits a three. Forty, now you, know there's not as much individuality and, creativity and the characters are are less distinct when everybody does the same, thing and the skills are our level across the.
Board all, Right, barry thank you so much for coming. On that was. GREAT i you, KNOW i thought this might be a fun conversation and it exceeded WHAT i was. Hoping you people can find You you're you're right at The Washington. Post it's a publication a few people may have heard. Of you also have written a few books about, Baseball The, Grind Inside Baseball's Endless season And National, Pastime sports,
politics and the return of baseball To, WASHINGTON. Dc so people can find you On twitter and find your writing at very very many.
OUTLETS i appreciate you, Plugging, matt and thanks for handing having Me. Andy it was a fun.
Conversation, Yeah i'll see you see you at THE Us.
Open yeah sounds. Good all, right.
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