5 Comments

Two and a half hours sounds about right to me, as well. But I wonder if there are correlates in the ensuing years that would indicate whether the lengthening of games has had any impact on attendance (adjusted for altered stadium capacities and other factors), TV ratings, fans' perceptions, popularity of the game (especially with kids), and the like. There appears to be a clear trend in the length-of-game data until 2000, then either a decline and resumption of the trend, or a flattening. Any thoughts on what might have caused this inflection point in 2000? With this many data points, once some companion opinion or behavioral data are identified, either time series or interrupted time series analysis might provide some interesting answers.

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Change for improvements is good. But change just for the sake of change is not. There’s a reason this game in its present form (sans the DH) has been around for over 160 years. No need to speed things up.

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