Baseball, long-regarded as America’s least interesting way to use bats, is looking to shake things up in an attempt to shorten its games, presumably to attract more younger viewers here in the go-go, Fast & Furious, Snapchatting, Bagel Bitesing 2010s. According to ESPN, Major League Baseball and the players’ union have agreed on a plan to change the rules on intentional walks, allowing team managers to simply signal from the dugout that they’d like to send the opposing batter directly to first, rather than go through the tedious rigmarole of the pitcher tossing four balls to the catcher while making a big, melodramatic show of shouting, “Ooooooooooops.”
In addition to saving the pitcher’s dignity, the rule change would also save some time—about a minute per walk that could be better spent on smacking some dingers. Of course, as ESPN also points out, intentional walks are already on the decline anyway: Last season, there were just 932 in total, or one every 2.6 games. That works out to just an average of 14 seconds a game that would be saved, or barely enough time for the stadium DJ to actually get to the second verse of John Fogerty’s “Centerfield.”