The Pace of the Game
A case for keeping things just the way they are…
I’m fascinated when people of older generations talk about their juniors. We’ve been around longer, learned and experienced more, have a better understanding of the world and the way things should be. We make predictions of fundamental societal and cultural change which sometimes materialize, but are often misguided. Ironically, as we proselytize about a vastly different future we purport to somehow know and understand it.
In baseball, there’s growing momentum to address a perceived problem with the “pace of the game.” The generally accepted wisdom is that the pitching and batting rituals and routines have increased the average duration of a game from about 2:30 in the ‘70s to above 3:00 in recent years. In his final months at the post, Baseball’s Commissioner Bud Selig has made it his priority to look into accelerating the pace of the game. He specifies that the problem is not the time (i.e. duration), but specifically the pace of play. And many baseball pundits echo this sentiment. The “old and wise” wracking their brains in an attempt to keep interested the ADHD ravaged audience of younger fans like me (the “Millennials”).
Many sports (golf being a obvious exception) are geared toward concentrated moments of intense action and instantly gratifying drama. Football is very easy to enjoy and understand on a surface level. You don’t have to know much about the game or the players to appreciate an incredibly athletic diving catch, skull-crushing hit or final-second Hail Mary touchdown pass. Display of brut force draws people to the NFL in a way that baseball could never touch. By contrast, baseball must maintain it’s methodical, cerebral nature.
Everyone seems to agree that for baseball to remain relevant it must reverse the trend toward longer games, but neither the time nor pace of the game is the problem.
In fact, the “timeless” element remains one of baseball’s most important differentiations. Baseball doesn’t have an attention problem, it has a presentation problem. Shallow attempts to compete directly with NFL-like excitement are falling flat because baseball is not a shallow sport.
What makes baseball great is when you begin to peel back its layers, and understand it’s nuanced inner workings. Why does a guy step out of the batters box between every pitch? Why’s the pitcher throwing over to 1st base 4 times before making an offering to the mound? For the uninitiated, these dynamics are annoying — but to those with a more intimate understanding of the game, these are dramatic exchanges throughout an epic 9+ inning struggle. Baseball is chess, not checkers. Like a fine whiskey, the game is an acquired taste, appreciated more as one invests in developing a deeper understanding of it.
It’s not just baseball either. In every industry there seems to be a scramble to connect with Millennials, mostly by way of vanity and virality. If given the choice of feeling something or nothing — we’ll take that something even if it’s fleeting and vain. Most of today’s experts think that connecting with the Millennial audience is about manufacturing short-lived surface-level distractions. But this flies in the face of a fundamental truth: Humans have always desired deeper feeling, meaning and understanding.
Instead of merely attempting to capture our attention, capture our imagination. Help us discover and make meaning of our experiences. Help us connect and engage deeper with fellow humans. When we begin to better leverage new technology to satisfy what humans have always desired, we’ll unlock the secret to engaging the digital generations and securing the next generation of lifelong fans.
There’s no need to speed the pace of the game, just craft better digital experiences that capture the magic of baseball and pull back the curtain on its nuances. Tell better stories with new technology that engage us deeper with the real-world experience of the game and educate us on its finer points. Immerse us in the magic of baseball, and we’ll be happy to devote much more time to the experience. Baseball doesn’t need to change to remain relevant for the next 150 years, it only needs to focus on the timeless magic that makes it truly great.
