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6-4-18 - Andy
Velcro contributing to longer games?

6-4-18 - Andy
Do we have a culprit?
Andy Dolich -- 2015
Andy Dolich
 
Blame it on Velcro!

By Andy Dolich

On September 28, 1919 the New York Giants beat the Philadelphia Phillies 6-1 in a game which lasted 51 minutes. It's a record for a nine inning game that has stood the test of time for 99 years.

Baseball's longest single inning tick tocked for one hour and eight minutes on May 8, 2004 between the Tigers and Rangers. Seventeen minutes longer than baseball's shortest nine inning game.

" It ain't over till it's over," and it wasn't for four hours and forty-five minutes on August 16, 2006 between the Yankees and Red Sox. It's the longest nine inning game in MLB history.

Who knew the slowdown of the National Pastime can be directly traced back to Swiss engineer George de Mestral. His invention was called Velcro in the mid 1950s, a mashup of the French velour ("velvet") and crochet ("hook").

Major League Baseball's advanced media research shows that Gen X, Y and Zers are turned off by the sloth-like pace of play not fitting into their nano-second attention lifestyles.
Baseball's time bandits are well known:

1.   Relievers can toss eight warm-up pitches after throwing 40 or more in the bullpen. It's not like they haven't seen a major league mound before. Batter up!

2.   Teams run every vapid video board feature: Kiss cam, wedding proposal cam, I can't dance cam, exit velocity cam, launch angle cam and Cam cam where you take a selfie and email it to the video screen.

3.   Commercials in between innings. They pay the bills.

4.   The pitching coach visits to the mound to chat about the meaning of life and asking the catcher and infielders quantum physics trivia questions.

5.   Video board reviews of exit velocity speeds, launch angles and some other form of analytic anomie.

6.   The Tortoise Walk from bullpen to the mound and the mound to the showers.

If Major League Baseball is truly committed to speeding up the game, then just ban Velcro!
The majority of major leaguers wear batting gloves. You see them constantly stepping out of the batter's box and fidgeting with the Velcro fastening straps around the wrists of their stylish gloves. Seems like team analytic quants have suggested a maximum tightening pressure of 121 lbs. per digit.

Velcro fastening straps have attached themselves to every manner of body armor devices for batters' elbows, hands, wrists, thumbs, knees, shins, feet and toes, making hitters look more like catchers, hockey goalies or weekend jousters at a local Renaissance Pleasure Faire.

The sounds of baseball used to be the crack of the bat, the horsehide thwacking into a leather catcher's mitt and umpires yelling, "Yer out!" Not the infernal ripping and tearing cloth-curdling opening and closing of velcroed batting gloves. Can you imagine if some audio nitwit starts piping the sound of Velcro through the speakers at your favorite ball yard. Worse than fingernails on a blackboard.

Hall of Famer, three-time AL MVP, 10-time World Series champion Yogi "Bare Handed" Berra had this to say about Velcro's negative effect on baseball before he passed away in 2015, "The future ain't what it used to be."

Andy Dolich has over five decades of leadership in the sports industry, including executive positions in the NFL, NBA, MLB, NHL, pro soccer and lacrosse. The Ohio University Sports Management graduate was Executive Vice-President of the Oakland A's during their run of success in the '80s and '90s, President of Business Operations for the Golden State Warriors, Memphis Grizzlies and COO of the San Francisco 49ers. Dolich runs a sports business and consulting practice in Northern California. Clients have included: IMG College; TBT (The Basketball Tournament on ESPN) 3Ball, a 3X3 basketball league launching in the summer of 2018; Stadium Links Golf; Vhere, an immersive reality company; and FCFL, Fan Controlled Football League. He is Entrepreneur in Residence at Menlo College and teaches sports business at Stanford's School of Continuing Studies. He is co-author of the new book,

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