Speaker 1: I miss a green, for example, I'm already upset. When
Speaker 1: I find my ball in the bunker, I'm really upset.
Speaker 1: And when I find my.
Speaker 2: Ball in a brid egg Friday Egg, the dreadit Frida Egg,
Speaker 2: Frida Egg, Frida egg bride.
Speaker 1: Egg Lie, I'm about ready to run off the golf course.
Speaker 1: Welcome back to another edition of the Friday Egg Podcast.
Speaker 1: Today's episode is with Barry's for Luga from the Washington Post.
Speaker 1: Barry writes about baseball a lot. He covers the Washington
Speaker 1: Nationals as well as, uh, you know, just general baseball
Speaker 1: topics for the Washington Post. He also covers golf for
Speaker 1: the Washington Post, so he was at the Masters. He
Speaker 1: goes to the major Championships. See Barry out on the
Speaker 1: golf beat as well it you know, I've been wanting
Speaker 1: to do this pod for a few weeks now. With
Speaker 1: the new rules with Major League Baseball, Major League Baseball
Speaker 1: obviously has undergone a pretty substantial change in the rules
Speaker 1: of the game for this year. The intentions of them
Speaker 1: really were to modernize the game, speed up the game,
Speaker 1: make the game more appealing to a younger audience, and
Speaker 1: they've instituted things such as a pitch clock, bigger bases,
Speaker 1: and really, you know, this is a seismic change for
Speaker 1: a sport that has held long standing traditions history. You know,
Speaker 1: it might sound familiar to another sport we talk about
Speaker 1: a lot on this podcast. Golf. Obviously, pace of play
Speaker 1: has come to a head in recent weeks. You know,
Speaker 1: I think slightly unfairly, I think Patrick Cantley has become
Speaker 1: the boy for this. There are a lot of slow golfers.
Speaker 1: Patrick Cantley obviously is in contentional lot. He's one of
Speaker 1: the best players in the world. So it kind of
Speaker 1: comes to light. But let's not act like there isn't
Speaker 1: a hundred slow players on the PGA Tour. Patrick Cantley
Speaker 1: is one of those. It does not excuse him, but
Speaker 1: it also you know, I think one of the one
Speaker 1: of the big issues in golf is that the governing
Speaker 1: bodies of the sport, the PGA Tour, the USGA, the RNA,
Speaker 1: don't do anything to really penalize slow play. We've had
Speaker 1: two instances really in the last ten years of slow
Speaker 1: play being penalized. One of them was said Decky Matsiama
Speaker 1: in the Open Championship when he was eighteen years old
Speaker 1: at Mierfield. So if it's not being monitored, what Patrick
Speaker 1: Cantley is doing is using the rules to the best
Speaker 1: of his advantage to play the best possible golf. Now,
Speaker 1: the bigger question it shouldn't be let's crucify Patrick Cantlay
Speaker 1: and Kim an example. It should be more discussing, Hey,
Speaker 1: what are the rules of the game. What's important to
Speaker 1: the game of golf is the ability to make decisions
Speaker 1: under the gun and read putts quickly A big part
Speaker 1: of golf, Like, is that an important part of the sport?
Speaker 1: I think it is. Others might disagree, But if you
Speaker 1: think about the product of golf, where it's going, what
Speaker 1: you want golf to be in the next hundred years,
Speaker 1: is pace of play important to the product of golf?
Speaker 1: I don't think you could make an argument that says
Speaker 1: it isn't you know these rounds where we were approaching
Speaker 1: five hours with twusome's in golf on weekends. That's not
Speaker 1: good for the sport. It makes it hard to televise
Speaker 1: that there's all these other trickle down effects. So the
Speaker 1: point of this conversation with Barry and I you know,
Speaker 1: I think you know I don't like to say, I
Speaker 1: think it turned out better than I anticipated. I was
Speaker 1: hopeful that this would be a pod that really translated
Speaker 1: and that Barry would kind of understand where I was
Speaker 1: going with it, and he really did and provided a
Speaker 1: lot of expertise on what baseball and is doing and
Speaker 1: how it relates back to golf. You know, I think
Speaker 1: that this is the type of things that the sport
Speaker 1: of golf needs to be looking at. It is a
Speaker 1: bit unique with the way it's structured, but if you
Speaker 1: look at every major league sport, whether it's baseball, hockey, football, basketball,
Speaker 1: they are constantly testing and looking at ways that they
Speaker 1: can improve their game, improve their product on television because
Speaker 1: they understand in order to stay relevant, in order to
Speaker 1: stay popular across generations, you need to make modifications evolutions
Speaker 1: to the game that appeal to the next generation. Baseball
Speaker 1: has done this. One of the things that they looked
Speaker 1: at was case of their games, and they have done
Speaker 1: it masterfully with this pitchclock. They're a month into it
Speaker 1: and really it's been phenomenal for the sport. So, without
Speaker 1: further ado, we are going to get into this topic.
Speaker 1: But you know, I think these are there are a
Speaker 1: lot of things in here. A lot of things in
Speaker 1: other sports that they are doing that golf really should
Speaker 1: look at in terms of modernizing the game and making
Speaker 1: the professional game more appealing to a wider range of people.
Speaker 1: All Right, Barry, thanks for coming on. This is gonna
Speaker 1: be a little bit different podcast than than our normal topic.
Speaker 1: We're gonna talk. We're gonna talk a lot about baseball.
Speaker 1: But I promise everybody there's going to be a tie
Speaker 1: back to golf here that there's a method to the madness. Barry,
Speaker 1: you cover both baseball and golf. I'm curious, just off
Speaker 1: the off the time up, you know, what, what's your
Speaker 1: favorite aspect about covering each sport? Like is there something
Speaker 1: that you you know when you're at the Masters that
Speaker 1: you said sin that you're like, I love covering golf,
Speaker 1: and and when when baseball season kicks up, like, what
Speaker 1: are you most excited about?
Speaker 2: You know? I mean there's an old saying about sports
Speaker 2: writing that the the smaller the ball, the better the writing,
Speaker 2: And so the two smallest balls are baseball and golf.
Speaker 2: I don't know if that's literally true, but there's certainly
Speaker 2: if you go through the litany of legendary sports writers
Speaker 2: like there's the Herbert Warren Wins and the you know,
Speaker 2: Peter Gammons, and they're they're kind of are baseball and
Speaker 2: golf writers. You don't think as much of the you know,
Speaker 2: literary flair around football necessarily, So I mean from a
Speaker 2: from a professional like aspiring to write well person, those
Speaker 2: two sports, for whatever reason, lend themselves to good storylines
Speaker 2: and good storytelling, and I do like them both, and
Speaker 2: i'd like I think I like them both differently. I
Speaker 2: love the flow of a golf tournament of a major
Speaker 2: week and you know kind of what to expect on
Speaker 2: Tuesdays and all the anticipation and and getting into the
Speaker 2: actual competition, and then you know, yesterday, for instance, I
Speaker 2: went up to Camding Yards and it's a sunny Wednesday
Speaker 2: afternoon for a one pm start between the Red Sox
Speaker 2: and the Orioles, and it feels like the whole summer
Speaker 2: is stretched out before you you see a nice, clean
Speaker 2: baseball game. I love them both kind of, I would
Speaker 2: say similarly and and differently. There's a different flow, but
Speaker 2: they also involve a lot of super insightful characters and storytellers,
Speaker 2: So I love them both.
Speaker 1: I imagine baseball like the dog days of you know
Speaker 1: the famous baseball the dog days like of August? Is
Speaker 1: that really like the dog days of being a sports
Speaker 1: writer and being at like game one hundred and twenty
Speaker 1: or whatever it is on the calendar, and just you know,
Speaker 1: if your team's not if you if you've got a
Speaker 1: bad team you're covering, it's gotta be just just an
Speaker 1: absolute drive to write every day.
Speaker 2: For sure, for sure. And that's you know, back when
Speaker 2: I was the beat writer, I covered the Washington Nationals
Speaker 2: for their first three and a half seasons, you know,
Speaker 2: of their existence. Like, yeah, you'd get to you know,
Speaker 2: you're on a one hundred lost pace and you get
Speaker 2: to August and you know it's the eighth day of
Speaker 2: an eleven day road trip, and it's not it's not easy.
Speaker 2: I used to try to, you know, walking into the park,
Speaker 2: say Okay, what's important and what's interesting about this team
Speaker 2: on this day and try to gear myself up for
Speaker 2: you know, not making it game one twenty out of
Speaker 2: one sixty two kind of a silo, but making it
Speaker 2: a chapter that tells that one hundred and sixty two
Speaker 2: game game story. And when you find those those threads
Speaker 2: that hold the season together. It makes it more interesting.
Speaker 2: But you do I'm not going to say in those
Speaker 2: days for the Beat writers that it's not a slog.
Speaker 2: It can you can love the game and it can
Speaker 2: be a slog in late August when you can't quite
Speaker 2: see the finish line yet, you know there's there's still
Speaker 2: quite a bit to go for a season that might
Speaker 2: be going nowhere.
Speaker 1: That that's good advice. That's that's great advice. I might
Speaker 1: take it to heart this week with the Mexico Open
Speaker 1: with one one player in the top ten, me wondering
Speaker 1: what are we doing having this event right? You know,
Speaker 1: it's just a chapter. It's a chapter in the season
Speaker 1: long book. You know we need we need William mcgert
Speaker 1: in the field for that for that chapter. It makes
Speaker 1: it more interesting. So to get into what I wanted
Speaker 1: to talk about here today, you know, baseball has gone
Speaker 1: through some I think, I think pretty major rules changes
Speaker 1: for the year. There are a few changes they aren't
Speaker 1: you know that obviously everybody's talking about the pitch clock.
Speaker 1: So the pitch clock is is the big change. There's
Speaker 1: now a timer that between pitches players, you know, the
Speaker 1: X amount of times the pitcher can throw the ball.
Speaker 1: And anytime the batter's got to be ready in that
Speaker 1: time frame. Obviously that that was untimed before it could
Speaker 1: be however long you really wanted to throw a pitch.
Speaker 1: You have bigger bases, and the shift has been eliminated.
Speaker 1: So I got those are the three big ones, right.
Speaker 1: What I'd love to hear about a little bit is like,
Speaker 1: from your view, what were the prevalent trends in the
Speaker 1: game before these changes, and you know kind of where
Speaker 1: what was like if you could zoom out a little,
Speaker 1: what was what was happening to baseball the last five
Speaker 1: to ten years.
Speaker 2: So in addition to games getting longer, just in terms
Speaker 2: of enduring what last year was a three hour and
Speaker 2: four minute game, there's been a real imbalance in baseball
Speaker 2: over the last decade. Teams have fetishized velocity from pitchers
Speaker 2: and really sought to develop it over all other qualities.
Speaker 2: And that's really led to a few things. What was
Speaker 2: you know, when we were growing up, what were the
Speaker 2: big narratives about a baseball game? Who's pitching that night?
Speaker 2: That was kind of defined what the matchup was going
Speaker 2: to be. Was it going to be two aces against
Speaker 2: each other? Was a lopsided matchup, and the job of
Speaker 2: those pitchers in the seventies and the eighties was to
Speaker 2: finish the game and shake the catcher's hand at the end.
Speaker 2: And what the job of the starting pitcher has become
Speaker 2: is to throw as hard as you can for as
Speaker 2: long as you can, and we'll come get you in
Speaker 2: the fourth, fifth, maybe sixth inning, and we're going to
Speaker 2: hand the ball over to a series of dudes that
Speaker 2: throw ninety eight and have ridiculous sliders, and they're going
Speaker 2: to go all out. And the only way the offense
Speaker 2: could counter was to swing. You know, there were no
Speaker 2: controlled swings. We're swinging up, we're swinging for launch angle,
Speaker 2: we're swinging to hit the ball out of the park.
Speaker 2: So what happened was you had strikeouts going up every
Speaker 2: year since two thousand and five, new record every single year.
Speaker 2: But also homer is starting to go up and no action.
Speaker 2: Like I always say, like, what's more interesting in baseball?
Speaker 2: A solo home run where you watch the ball go
Speaker 2: out and the guy jogs around or somebody you know,
Speaker 2: a run around first and a ball into the right
Speaker 2: field corner and now you have to look at the
Speaker 2: right fielder and the cutoff man, and then the third
Speaker 2: base coach, and is the runner is. You know, there's
Speaker 2: five or six things that are going on over a
Speaker 2: longer speriod period of time in that play where the
Speaker 2: home run is is is boring. So that's a long
Speaker 2: witted way of saying that all of those things had
Speaker 2: the game out of whack, and then it was taking longer,
Speaker 2: too long, and those you know, four hour postseason games
Speaker 2: that no ten year old kid on the East Coast
Speaker 2: could see the end of, you know, really threatening to
Speaker 2: kill the game. So change was needed. Change was necessary.
Speaker 2: They made some really fundamental changes and it's already having
Speaker 2: a big impact.
Speaker 1: Yeah. I think people would push back obviously immediately on
Speaker 1: the homer being less interesting, But when when you think
Speaker 1: about it, like, what makes a homer special is when
Speaker 1: they're scarce, when you know they aren't the prevalent way
Speaker 1: people score runs, right, Like, it's I think it's really similar.
Speaker 1: And I don't want to get too into the comparisons
Speaker 1: to golf, but with a long drive, right, everybody says like, oh,
Speaker 1: they're super long drives, but if everybody hits the long drive,
Speaker 1: what is a long drive? Right? I remember growing up
Speaker 1: obviously I grew up in a Bridge era in the
Speaker 1: ninety I mean, I remember early nineties baseball, and then
Speaker 1: I was a Cubs. I grew up a Cubs fan,
Speaker 1: so I had the Sammy Sosid Mark McGuire steroid fest.
Speaker 1: I think that's okay to say on a golf podcast
Speaker 1: where everybody's launching homers, but it was still like, you know,
Speaker 1: you saw like the metamorphos of you talked about the
Speaker 1: Orioles games of a Brady Anderson going from a nine
Speaker 1: home run guy.
Speaker 2: To fifty home run.
Speaker 1: Yeah, when all of a sudden everybody's hitting thirty to
Speaker 1: fifty homers. It's not of a crazy phenomenon. It's almost
Speaker 1: like a diminishing return, right is the home run when
Speaker 1: there's a couple, you know, when there might be one
Speaker 1: a game. It's really an amazing spectacle that home run.
Speaker 1: But the idea of manufacturing runs and the tension that
Speaker 1: comes with having to really work for runs, I think
Speaker 1: is I think that's what people fall in love with
Speaker 1: every playoff. In the playoffs, where I feel like runs
Speaker 1: become a little bit more scarce than in the regular season.
Speaker 1: I don't know if that's this is just somebody that
Speaker 1: usually watches baseball, but runs get a little bit more scarce.
Speaker 1: And that's kind of what the lure of baseball is
Speaker 1: is when you have to, you know, generate the runs
Speaker 1: rather than just, you know, they just appear.
Speaker 2: Yeah, And I mean, I'll just use that game that
Speaker 2: I went to yesterday, the Oriols one sixty two of
Speaker 2: the Red Sox. The Red Sox had one of the
Speaker 2: runs on a solo homer, but the Orioles they had
Speaker 2: two sacrifice bunts to move guys just from first and
Speaker 2: second to second and third. They I'm not going to
Speaker 2: argue that the sacrifice fly is a particularly interesting play,
Speaker 2: but at least if there's gonna be a play at
Speaker 2: the plate, like, there's some tension there. The guy's setting up,
Speaker 2: you've got places to turn your head and different. You know,
Speaker 2: again the third base coach is he gonna send him?
Speaker 2: What's the timing here? So the Oriols win a game
Speaker 2: six to two in which you know, they had twelve hits,
Speaker 2: that's action each one of those hits is you know,
Speaker 2: I think there's more tension. And I don't want to
Speaker 2: sound like some sort of home run fascist, but like
Speaker 2: there's more tension in a single to write with a
Speaker 2: guy on first and you're evaluating, Okay, is this guy
Speaker 2: gonna go for thirty? Is there going to be a
Speaker 2: play at third? There's just there's more action, and then
Speaker 2: you take what we're really here to talk about is
Speaker 2: the pitch clock, meaning that the next play comes more quickly.
Speaker 2: There's just more reason to be engaged all the time.
Speaker 2: You don't lose track of how many outs are there,
Speaker 2: how you know what's the count. You're you're more locked
Speaker 2: in because you have to be here. You're gonna miss stuff.
Speaker 2: You know.
Speaker 1: A great way to synthesize this would be if, as
Speaker 1: you were talking about that, I was thinking about going
Speaker 1: back to my youth when I try what I keep score,
Speaker 1: you know, manually keep score, and how simple solo home
Speaker 1: runs are versus when you have a guy on first,
Speaker 1: you have sacrifice, like all the little intricacies of of
Speaker 1: keeping that perfect scorecard. You know, you know when that happens,
Speaker 1: and you know that it's it's funny because like you
Speaker 1: think about like a guy going to third, like you
Speaker 1: signifying all that while you're keeping score, would be like
Speaker 1: a perfect way to visualize what you're talking about, like
Speaker 1: the interest in the game so.
Speaker 2: I'm gonna grab from my trash, uh the score my
Speaker 2: scorecard from yesterday.
Speaker 1: Okay, wait, this might be the video video cutout right.
Speaker 2: Yeah, so but anyway, you're you're totally right, Like you
Speaker 2: probably can't see this, but that's this is the orial
Speaker 2: side of the board and all this stuff where the
Speaker 2: runs are scored and there's a sack here and I
Speaker 2: keep track of which which hit place in the lineup
Speaker 2: moves the guys over, and how did you know? That?
Speaker 2: To me tells a more interesting story then then if
Speaker 2: we go to the Red Sox, like here's the solo homers, Like, okay, yeah,
Speaker 2: let us let off the inning with the solo homer,
Speaker 2: it's just like a block. Like we may be getting
Speaker 2: too deep in the in the weeds. But I'm sure
Speaker 2: there are nerds who listen to this podcast and and
Speaker 2: there's nothing nerdier than than doing that and believing that
Speaker 2: it it tells a story about the game.
Speaker 1: Well, I think that you could say the same thing
Speaker 1: with with golf, right it's you know, when you have
Speaker 1: to hit more shots, that's just like what we're talking
Speaker 1: about here. And I didn't mean to get into the
Speaker 1: comparisons directly, but like you know, when when players are
Speaker 1: forced to hit more shots, just like there, when there
Speaker 1: are more possible outcomes in in baseball, you could bunt,
Speaker 1: you could try and hit and run, you could try
Speaker 1: and you know you want to hit to the left
Speaker 1: side of the enfield, you know, or the right side
Speaker 1: of the enfield to move the right side of the enfield,
Speaker 1: move a guy from second to third, Like you know,
Speaker 1: when you have these these more varied outcomes in golf,
Speaker 1: it's okay should I lay up on a par five,
Speaker 1: like what we saw with the changes that Augusta National
Speaker 1: has made, for example, where it's not a foregone conclusion
Speaker 1: if I hit the fairway that I am going for
Speaker 1: the green in two, like the idea that there was
Speaker 1: even a thought in players heads, even though they all
Speaker 1: ended up going for it again, but like even though
Speaker 1: there was a thought, there was discourse before the week.
Speaker 1: It made it more interesting because all of a sudden,
Speaker 1: when they're they hit the fairway, there's the tension of
Speaker 1: the walk to the ball. Are they going to go
Speaker 1: for it? Yeah?
Speaker 2: And I think I was absolutely thinking about the team
Speaker 2: move back at thirteen and Augusta when you were talking
Speaker 2: about that, because like it wasn't even just that there
Speaker 2: wasn't a thought that they were going to go for
Speaker 2: it before. It was like they were going to go
Speaker 2: for it with an aid iron, right, Like it's just
Speaker 2: it's pitch and putt to some Now is there an
Speaker 2: excitement and somebody rolling in an eagle putt at number
Speaker 2: thirteen on August on a Sunday. Yeah, absolutely, I'm not
Speaker 2: going to deny that. But like it matters that they're
Speaker 2: standing over you know, in some cases a fore iron
Speaker 2: over that creek and into you know, a green that
Speaker 2: suddenly is not as receptive because the launch, you know,
Speaker 2: the angle it's coming in is different. Like you want variety,
Speaker 2: and if you put the home run with the long
Speaker 2: drive and the long drive leading to just you know,
Speaker 2: having a wedge in and spinning it back, that's not
Speaker 2: as interesting as I think for nerds around the sport.
Speaker 2: And I would equate this with baseball too, like all
Speaker 2: the stuff that I was talking about earlier, the stuff
Speaker 2: that's actually action that's not involved in a home run.
Speaker 2: It's very very similar to Okay, I just hit a
Speaker 2: three hundred and thirty four yard drive and now I
Speaker 2: have a wedge in and that's an easy birdy.
Speaker 1: And I think the thing about it is just like
Speaker 1: homer's right, Homers, like what we're talking about, homers are
Speaker 1: are more interesting when they're a little bit more of
Speaker 1: a feat. Right. An eagle on a par five is
Speaker 1: way way more compelling, way more exciting when it is
Speaker 1: more of a feat. When there's less eagles of like
Speaker 1: scored on a hole, that eagle is more exciting and interesting,
Speaker 1: just the same same way a birdie on a on
Speaker 1: a tough part part four, par three is is more
Speaker 1: interesting than a you know, a birdie on a par
Speaker 1: three that's giving them away like you know, free candy. Right,
Speaker 1: those birdies, those become more significant, more relevant. So back
Speaker 1: to the baseball stuff, you know, before these changes were made,
Speaker 1: what were the complaints that kind of were bubbling within
Speaker 1: within the game before anything was done.
Speaker 2: So I think, you know, if you go to the
Speaker 2: velocity and the imbalance between the pitcher and the hitter,
Speaker 2: that that people couldn't really identify that necessarily. But the
Speaker 2: root of all evil here was velocity. But that built
Speaker 2: a longer game, and worse than the length of the
Speaker 2: game was the amount of inaction in the middle of
Speaker 2: the game when a pitcher could take as much time
Speaker 2: as he wanted to take deep breaths to walk off
Speaker 2: the back of the mound to get the rosen ban
Speaker 2: bag and dry his hand. He's gathering strength again to
Speaker 2: throw another ninety nine mile an hour fastball to a
Speaker 2: hitter who might say, you know what, Actually, I'm not
Speaker 2: feeling it right now. I'm going to step out. So
Speaker 2: what they've done with this pitch clock, which is fifteen
Speaker 2: seconds between pitches on a normal scenario, is the brilliant
Speaker 2: part about it is they have eliminated nothing that you
Speaker 2: wanted to see in the first place. They have only
Speaker 2: cut fat from the game. And it's visceral. You can
Speaker 2: feel it when you're watching a game on TV or
Speaker 2: you're at a game. The ball is going back to
Speaker 2: the pitcher and he is reporting to the rubber and
Speaker 2: he's getting himself set and the hitter has to be
Speaker 2: in there at seven seconds on the clock or it's
Speaker 2: a violation against him. And they're doing it again and
Speaker 2: the result I mean. I asked Major League Baseball to
Speaker 2: send me this morning the updated numbers through yesterday, through
Speaker 2: twenty eight days of the season. Last year, games were
Speaker 2: three hours and five minutes long. On average, they settled
Speaker 2: at three hours and four minutes over the course of
Speaker 2: the entire season. Through twenty eight days of this season,
Speaker 2: they're two hours and thirty six minutes long. That is
Speaker 2: twenty eight minutes a game shorter, essentially a half an
Speaker 2: hour on average shorter. Take that over the course of
Speaker 2: the season, and that's eighty hours of only fat that
Speaker 2: you have cut out of baseball. And you may have
Speaker 2: East Coast kids who can turn on their team at
Speaker 2: seven and watch them until nine thirty and still get
Speaker 2: to bed at an hour when they're not bleary eyed
Speaker 2: in the morning. It's just it's a fundamental, fundamental change
Speaker 2: to not just the length of the game, but the
Speaker 2: pace of the game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think that it's it's it's so important, right obviously,
Speaker 1: Like it is, like you said things that nobody wanted
Speaker 1: to watch, right, Like you can maybe make an argument
Speaker 1: that the time builds tension. That could be one thing
Speaker 1: you could make an argument, but like, is it noticeably
Speaker 1: different between fifteen seconds and a minute or two minutes?
Speaker 2: Yeah, well, you talk about building the tension. Like I remember,
Speaker 2: and this was years ago. I would say it was
Speaker 2: two thousand and six or two thousand and seven, I
Speaker 2: was primarily a baseball I was a baseball report and
Speaker 2: in the postseason, you know, these games were the Red
Speaker 2: Sox were taught to like take as many pitches as
Speaker 2: you can follow them back, like have these incredibly long
Speaker 2: at bats. And I remember doing a story on that
Speaker 2: at that time and talking to a television producer, you
Speaker 2: know who produced the games for Fox or ESPN or
Speaker 2: whoever it was at the time, saying, we have to
Speaker 2: have this whole dance where okay, here's the picture, here's
Speaker 2: the hitter, now it's the manager, here's a nervous fan.
Speaker 2: Now we're back to the picture. And you're what do
Speaker 2: you do? You know, yes, there's drama in doing that,
Speaker 2: but there's no action. And if you repeat that kind
Speaker 2: of scenario, you know, a hundred times a night, that's
Speaker 2: just that's rough, and that is it's not it's not action.
Speaker 2: And I think if you you know, with golf, the
Speaker 2: good thing about a golf telecast is you can move
Speaker 2: away from it. Either's one hundred and forty four players
Speaker 2: or a hundred fifty six players or whatever, obviously not
Speaker 2: all out there at the same time, but half that
Speaker 2: out there at roughly the same time, you've got choices
Speaker 2: and you don't have to cut out or you don't
Speaker 2: have to just sit there and watch the waiting. But
Speaker 2: there's no question that it impacts the play the experience
Speaker 2: of anybody on site watching it when you're when you're
Speaker 2: walking around for a five hour round where you're watching
Speaker 2: Patrick Cantley, you know, or yeah, right, no, it matters.
Speaker 2: It totally matters.
Speaker 1: Well, I think, like the thing with golf telecast that
Speaker 1: I noticed is that the problem you know, and this
Speaker 1: is where the pitch clock's brilliant, right, and like the
Speaker 1: problem with the with the golf telecast is that they
Speaker 1: have they go to pre shot routine and they have
Speaker 1: no clue when that pre shot routine is going to
Speaker 1: be over right, so you might be with the player
Speaker 1: for you see it. Sometimes where they're on a player,
Speaker 1: they cut away from the player and come back to
Speaker 1: the player. Sometimes they stay on the player and it's
Speaker 1: like we're watching this for ninety seconds. If all of
Speaker 1: a sudden they had a finite amount of time, you know,
Speaker 1: and I know that we can talk about implementation. I
Speaker 1: want to talk about this a little bit later, but
Speaker 1: if they have a finite amount of time, all of
Speaker 1: a sudden, it cures one of like golf fans who
Speaker 1: watch on TV's biggest issues with the sport show the
Speaker 1: more shots. Right, if you know when players are hitting
Speaker 1: and where it is in the in the shot clock,
Speaker 1: all of a sudden, you can go to them like
Speaker 1: you have like you have markers. It makes covering the
Speaker 1: sport from a telecast standpoint way easier, as I imagine
Speaker 1: baseball like baseball does different shots. You know, announcers like
Speaker 1: one of the things I admire so much, and I
Speaker 1: think golf needs more of the baseball announcer, Like you know,
Speaker 1: I'll never forget like Pat Hughes on radio telecast and
Speaker 1: Chicago talking about like where baseball's were made, like in
Speaker 1: the dead time, like it's spanning like two innings, I'm
Speaker 1: talking about the process of making a baseball Like I
Speaker 1: don't know why that memory sticks in my head for
Speaker 1: fifteen minutes. But like now I've imagined the sport's probably
Speaker 1: a lot easier to telecast, like the announcers have to
Speaker 1: be like way more locked in.
Speaker 2: Yeah, and I do think you're right about the golf telecasts,
Speaker 2: Like you know, those producers are super super talented, and
Speaker 2: I think like, for the most part, I really enjoy
Speaker 2: golf telecasts, even though I agree with you that you
Speaker 2: know that the main complaint is show more shots. But
Speaker 2: if you if you have a hard clock on a
Speaker 2: guy and you don't have to make if you're a producer,
Speaker 2: you don't have to make that choice of oh my god,
Speaker 2: when is this guy going to pull the trigger? You
Speaker 2: know when the trigger is going to be pulled. You've
Speaker 2: got your screens up here and you know what's going
Speaker 2: on elsewhere. It's a lot I'd never been in that role.
Speaker 2: I have to imagine would be a lot easier to
Speaker 2: plan and have the end result be over the course
Speaker 2: of X hours we've seen why more golf shots like that?
Speaker 2: That would be very, very meaningful to the to the
Speaker 2: television product for sure.
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Speaker 1: to Barry. So, you know, as we we've gotten into
Speaker 1: the weeds, you know this hasn't gone as as planned,
Speaker 1: but I kind of want to keep moving this conversation
Speaker 1: along because we could we could talk about this for hours,
Speaker 1: I think. But so to sum up kind of baseball
Speaker 1: in a state, you know, people had felt like some
Speaker 1: of the intricacy of the game had been lost. The
Speaker 1: game had fundamentally changed, you know, in the sense of
Speaker 1: what skills were recorded, rewarded and thrived. And maybe not
Speaker 1: everybody agreed for the better. I imagine that there were
Speaker 1: some that said the game is better and healthier, and
Speaker 1: I want to get into some of that. And the
Speaker 1: games were getting longer and longer. It was taking longer
Speaker 1: to play than ever really before. Would you say that
Speaker 1: sums up kind of the main thesis of what was
Speaker 1: going on in baseball.
Speaker 2: Yeah, I mean, if you want to distill it down
Speaker 2: to maybe one sentence or one catchphrase, it was a
Speaker 2: lot more time for a lot less action. So I mean,
Speaker 2: you take we can if you want to get really
Speaker 2: into the weeds, like batting average is not a really
Speaker 2: good way to evaluate an individual player, but league batting
Speaker 2: average is. You know, what does an average major league
Speaker 2: hitter hit is a way to tell how much action
Speaker 2: there is in the game, and that had dipped down
Speaker 2: last year. Two I'm going to get the number not
Speaker 2: exactly right, but to around two forty like in in
Speaker 2: when I was growing up in the eighties, a two
Speaker 2: forty hitter was like, you better be a really good
Speaker 2: defender to stay in the in the lineup because you're
Speaker 2: not doing your pulling your weight offensively. When that's the
Speaker 2: average hitter across the league, that tells you that the
Speaker 2: ball's not in play enough, there's not enough enough action.
Speaker 2: And then you couple that with okay, all that action
Speaker 2: is spread out over three hours rather than contained to
Speaker 2: two and a half. That was a major, major impetus
Speaker 2: for the rule changes. And one of the things you
Speaker 2: didn't mention in rule changes that is important as well
Speaker 2: is they've limited pickoff attempts for when you're throwing for
Speaker 2: a pitcher throwing to a base, you can do it
Speaker 2: twice the third time. Uh, it's it's a buck if
Speaker 2: you don't get them that. That, along with the larger bases,
Speaker 2: has stolen base attempts up and when you when you
Speaker 2: Major League Baseball did a survey I think it was
Speaker 2: two or three years ago that they didn't widely publicize,
Speaker 2: but they asked fans, what are your more most exciting
Speaker 2: were the plays you get most excited about? Stolen base
Speaker 2: attempts was up there. Great defensive plays was up there,
Speaker 2: the triple was up there. I'm probably forgetting something, but
Speaker 2: it was not. It was not the home run. It
Speaker 2: was these things that involve athleticism, anticipation, that kind of
Speaker 2: excitement they've started to instill. We don't know the full
Speaker 2: summer play out of Like is batting average going to
Speaker 2: rise over the course of the summer. It hasn't changed,
Speaker 2: you know, Guys still throw one hundred and they still
Speaker 2: use a lot of relievers all that kind of stuff,
Speaker 2: but they've they've started to get at least the running
Speaker 2: game going again, and that matters. It totally matters in
Speaker 2: your enjoyment of a specific play, a specific inning, a
Speaker 2: specific game.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I think, let's say would be said with golf,
Speaker 1: with with law everybody, you know, what's the most exciting
Speaker 1: shot in golf? What are the most memorable shots in golf?
Speaker 1: They're usually chip shots or approach shots. You know, Yeah,
Speaker 1: there's a coup, there's a handful of drives, and those
Speaker 1: are like when you drive a green, you know, and
Speaker 1: you know that if you you know, like, but for
Speaker 1: the most part, the predominant shot that you think about,
Speaker 1: like if you remember iconic shots. A lot of them
Speaker 1: are approach shots or chip shots. So how did how
Speaker 1: did this the rules changes get started? And like what
Speaker 1: was like the kind of undercurrent of this whole, this
Speaker 1: big change that happened this year. And I think to
Speaker 1: your point about the rules changes, like you're not going
Speaker 1: to see the big impact of these rules changes at
Speaker 1: baseball until you can zoom out from like five or
Speaker 1: ten years and see where the game goes, because it
Speaker 1: takes a while for you know, strategies and different things
Speaker 1: to change personnel too.
Speaker 2: Right, Well, I mean, I think it's also again probably
Speaker 2: similar to the discussions going in golf if you have
Speaker 2: a slower product in a you know, being played to
Speaker 2: generations that are used to rapid fire in whatever they want,
Speaker 2: you know, whether it's social media or texting or whatever.
Speaker 2: Kids are not sitting on the couch being like Okay,
Speaker 2: I'm going to see one pitch every ninety seconds or whatever.
Speaker 2: Like that's not compelling in any way. So you're you're
Speaker 2: you're dealing with a sport that has an aging fan
Speaker 2: base to begin with. You have to find a way
Speaker 2: to replenish the fans on the young end and get
Speaker 2: that demographic and have a future for the sport and
Speaker 2: have it be something that even resembled the national past time.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it baseball has seated that spot
Speaker 2: a long time ago, but it just wasn't sustainable down
Speaker 2: the path that it was going. And it took smart
Speaker 2: people at Major League Baseball and with the players Union
Speaker 2: to say we got to do something here. So when
Speaker 2: I think we both admires theo Epstein, who was a
Speaker 2: formal general manager with the Red Sox and the Cobs,
Speaker 2: he became a point person for MLB on thinking through
Speaker 2: these problems and saying, Okay, what what can we do
Speaker 2: here to restore some of the balance between pitcher and hitter,
Speaker 2: to instill more action into the game so that it's
Speaker 2: moving at a faster pace and there's more exciting stuff
Speaker 2: to watch. And you come up with a pretty interesting
Speaker 2: package that they you know, they were able to test
Speaker 2: in the in the minors. And I remember hearing the
Speaker 2: first data points when the pitchclock was used in a
Speaker 2: couple of minor league leagues a couple of years ago,
Speaker 2: where they were saying, oh, the game time is down
Speaker 2: to two twenty eight here whatever, I'm picking a number.
Speaker 2: The game time's down to two and a half hours
Speaker 2: in this league is single a league in California that
Speaker 2: we tried it, It's just made this huge difference. I
Speaker 2: was like, that can't possibly be true. Like, if that's true,
Speaker 2: why aren't we doing it right now? And it's after
Speaker 2: less than a month of the pitchclock being in the majors.
Speaker 2: I mean, I think it'll be mid season before the
Speaker 2: wide percentage of the fan base is saying isn't saying
Speaker 2: what's up with this pitchclock? They're saying, how did we
Speaker 2: not have a pitch clock for the last twenty years?
Speaker 1: Yeah? I mean, you know, I haven't been excited for
Speaker 1: a baseball season for a while. And part of that,
Speaker 1: you know, my Cubs are we might be on the
Speaker 1: up and up, but it's been a rough a couple
Speaker 1: of years. But I mean, like I was with my
Speaker 1: Dad's a huge baseball man, and I was with him
Speaker 1: on spring break right before you know, uh, the season started,
Speaker 1: and like we were like talking baseball and how like
Speaker 1: how excited? You know? And it was opening day and
Speaker 1: I had I turned baseball on. I was like, I
Speaker 1: couldn't wait to watch baseball, you know, because of this clock.
Speaker 1: I wanted to see what was going on? And I
Speaker 1: think like the thing that golf and baseball share here
Speaker 1: is like you talked about the pace, this younger generation pace,
Speaker 1: Like what do you do if you know NBA playoffs
Speaker 1: are on right now? When when a game goes to commercial,
Speaker 1: what's what's your first inclination if you're sitting on the couch,
Speaker 1: what do you do?
Speaker 2: You go and get a drink, you go to the bathroom,
Speaker 2: I don't know.
Speaker 1: I mean you look at your phone, you do something, or.
Speaker 2: You click to something else, Like your attention is distracted.
Speaker 1: Right, So it's just the same thing with golf. It's
Speaker 1: like if you have ninety seconds between a pitch or
Speaker 1: ninety seconds between a shot, it's extremely likely that somebody's
Speaker 1: not gonna watch shot because they're going to get distracted
Speaker 1: and do something else, right, And that's the idea, is
Speaker 1: giving people a clock to measure against. Like, Okay, I
Speaker 1: know I have to pay attention. Here is a fascinating
Speaker 1: it just like it makes sense and like what you said,
Speaker 1: like you get into it, you get into the miners
Speaker 1: what they're doing it, and it's like, why why haven't
Speaker 1: we been doing this? What were the main detractors to
Speaker 1: these rules changes, saying and like, who who did they represent?
Speaker 2: Well? I mean, I think you know people who romanticize
Speaker 2: about baseball, and I think that the two most romanticized
Speaker 2: sports from people within them are golf and baseball. People
Speaker 2: they there are people in my job as sports writers
Speaker 2: who I think in both of these sports almost see
Speaker 2: themselves as protectors and promoters of the game. No, we don't.
Speaker 2: We've never had a clock in baseball. Baseball's beauty is
Speaker 2: in fact that it is untimed, and you'll be stripping
Speaker 2: away a fundamental element of the game. Now, was that
Speaker 2: over romanticized and was it outdated because of what has
Speaker 2: happened and the way pitchers and hitters were manipulating the
Speaker 2: fact that they were not timed. Yeah, I would argue absolutely.
Speaker 2: And you're not in either of these sports. Are you
Speaker 2: going to please everybody if you make changes? I mean
Speaker 2: it's there's that debate with the ball in golf as well, right, Like,
Speaker 2: you know, are we would if the ball is real? Back?
Speaker 2: Are we stripping these guys of you know, these more
Speaker 2: athletic players of something that they've worked hard to attain.
Speaker 2: We can you know, that's a totally different path that
Speaker 2: I know, you guys talk about a lot, but there
Speaker 2: are in any of it. There are people who would say,
Speaker 2: it's the sport is going to evolve. We should allow
Speaker 2: it to evolve naturally, not by putting artificial implement that's
Speaker 2: in that say, okay, now we have a structure that
Speaker 2: we've never had before. And I would argue that the
Speaker 2: one change that they did that I think more people
Speaker 2: are queasy about than even the pitch clock is the
Speaker 2: banning of shifts, because the argument would be, there's never
Speaker 2: been assigned defensive positions by rule other than the pitcher
Speaker 2: has to stand on the rubber and the catcher has
Speaker 2: to be in the catcher's box. The other seven guys
Speaker 2: could all stand in left field if they thought that
Speaker 2: was the most.
Speaker 1: Effect, not have a catcher. It would be a bad idea,
Speaker 1: But you like.
Speaker 2: That would be bad, right. But the point is, I
Speaker 2: think the thing that people are uneasy about there is
Speaker 2: no have the offense. Part of this evolution should be
Speaker 2: can't be offense? Figure out how to beat three infielders
Speaker 2: to the right side of second base, that kind of thing.
Speaker 2: So I get that debate, but as a package has
Speaker 2: had to happen because the sport was killing itself essentially
Speaker 2: by what it had become.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean baseball's undergone ball deadening too, right, yeap,
Speaker 1: I mean did now that question? This is I didn't
Speaker 1: plan on asking this question. But do you feel like
Speaker 1: that when they deadened the ball, that athletic, powerful baseball
Speaker 1: players were had things stripped away from them?
Speaker 2: No? No, no, no. And and in fact, you know,
Speaker 2: you go back to something you said very originally like
Speaker 2: homers are more interesting when they're less prevalent, right, Like,
Speaker 2: so if it took more to hit a homer, then
Speaker 2: then that's fine. The other thing about the you know, athleticism.
Speaker 2: One thing that shifting did, uh, was minimize athleticism. Because
Speaker 2: if if you've got three guys to the right of
Speaker 2: second base and there's a hard ground ball over there,
Speaker 2: you know, Ryan Sandberg doesn't have to die for it
Speaker 2: because he's got somebody playing behind him in short right field.
Speaker 2: You're like, okay, we've got this covered. There's less exciting
Speaker 2: defensive plays. I mean, again, theof seen in a conversation
Speaker 2: I had with him probably a couple of years ago. Now,
Speaker 2: put it this way, we have better athletes than we've
Speaker 2: ever had playing this sport and we are limiting the
Speaker 2: ways that they can show their athleticism. So you know,
Speaker 2: the same could be said, uh. I think for for golf,
Speaker 2: you want things to be rare. Rare means exciting.
Speaker 1: Well, how did players feel about it? Like, what was
Speaker 1: there the general discourse with players? Obviously they don't have
Speaker 1: as uh I would say, outside of an influence as
Speaker 1: UH as golfers do, where they they are the owners
Speaker 1: of the sport and the UH and the players, right
Speaker 1: there is a little bit different setup. But what was
Speaker 1: the what was the general feeling of players?
Speaker 2: Well, I mean there was you know, some pushback and
Speaker 2: some reluctance because it's hard for players. I mean, one
Speaker 2: way that baseball players are similar to golfers is in
Speaker 2: a way they're all their individual corporations. Right. Yes, they're
Speaker 2: a member of a team and the team's success matters
Speaker 2: and that's part of their legacy. But in a in
Speaker 2: a vacuum, in a selfish way, their job, over the
Speaker 2: course of their very finance career is to earn as
Speaker 2: much as they can, and so part of that is
Speaker 2: like what is my routine, what is my routine in
Speaker 2: leading into a game, and what was my routine in
Speaker 2: that game very analogous to golf, Like your pre shot
Speaker 2: routine is really important to you. My pre pitch routine
Speaker 2: before I throw a pitch is very important to me.
Speaker 2: If you're fundamentally changing that, I might I might be
Speaker 2: really reluctant. I would give. And I think the gives
Speaker 2: players an enormous amount of credit for not complaining left
Speaker 2: and right. You have there been individual instances where you know,
Speaker 2: how can how can that be? Like I get this penalty,
Speaker 2: you know, a ball four when I was fractionally late
Speaker 2: on something. Yes, and there will be those going going forward.
Speaker 2: But in general, because they had an entire spring to
Speaker 2: get used to it, and spring training in baseball is
Speaker 2: essentially seven weeks, the buy in has been tremendous. And
Speaker 2: even guys joke about like, well, you know, it's kind
Speaker 2: of nice being home at nine forty five and not
Speaker 2: ten forty five after a night game. There are they
Speaker 2: I think they can see that they haven't been so
Speaker 2: disturbed in their pre pitch or pre shot routine that
Speaker 2: it's fundamentally affecting how they do their jobs. And there
Speaker 2: are ancillary benefits like they have more time with their
Speaker 2: kids or whatever.
Speaker 1: Well, I mean, you're talking eighty hours of like not
Speaker 1: competing is extraordinarily that's like very relevant. Well and in
Speaker 1: terms of like how you're gonna feel and mentally in
Speaker 1: the body, Like the mental aspect of being on field
Speaker 1: for thirty extra minutes is extreme. Like anybody that's played
Speaker 1: competitive golf, like you, you feel a difference when you
Speaker 1: get off the course when it's a five hour competitive
Speaker 1: round versus a four and a half hour competitive round,
Speaker 1: like that stuff. And if you do it, you know,
Speaker 1: four days in a row, just like baseball, Just like golf,
Speaker 1: like if you have four games in a row, two
Speaker 1: extra hours of that intense focus, like you know, both
Speaker 1: of them, I think people would say are not like
Speaker 1: the most physically grueling sports. Sure do you need to
Speaker 1: be physically tuned to play them, but like they are
Speaker 1: not like basketball or tennis, where you're just like holy cow,
Speaker 1: like I can't believe the endurance, you know, but they
Speaker 1: they they have a mental aspect of them that those
Speaker 1: other sports might not carry as much in terms of
Speaker 1: like the just the anguish in the amount of focus
Speaker 1: that's required in short bursts.
Speaker 2: So I also think that that so there's the totality
Speaker 2: of what you're talking about, like the extra half hour
Speaker 2: adding on to an extra half hour the next night,
Speaker 2: adding on to an extra half hour in the third
Speaker 2: game of the series or whatever. But there's also the
Speaker 2: possibility and probability of losing focus in between pitches, like, Oh,
Speaker 2: I'm oh, it's going to be you know, seventy five
Speaker 2: seconds before this guy's what I'm looking in the stands.
Speaker 2: I'm like, that's a real thing. You see, Guys have
Speaker 2: to be more engaged on every pitch because every pitch
Speaker 2: is coming more quickly. I think that there's a and
Speaker 2: this is probably down a rabbit hole. But there's a
Speaker 2: sports psychology element to all of this that plays to
Speaker 2: both golf and baseball, where you know an individual players
Speaker 2: in either sports, sports psychologists is saying you control what
Speaker 2: you can control, and what you can control is your
Speaker 2: preparation for not only that day, but for each and
Speaker 2: every event within that day. That I think, it's inarguable,
Speaker 2: has contributed to slow play in either of those sports.
Speaker 2: Because I'm the pitcher, I'm in control. I'm not going
Speaker 2: to do this until i'm ready. I'm a golfer, I'm
Speaker 2: not going to stand over this ball until i'm very
Speaker 2: clear in how I'm visualizing this shot. I've sorted out
Speaker 2: all the variables and now I'm in control of my
Speaker 2: swing that contributes to longer processes period across the board
Speaker 2: whatever you're trying to execute.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I completely agree with this in I think that's
Speaker 1: like one of the failings up until nowt of baseball
Speaker 1: and golf is not rewarding the skill of somebody who's
Speaker 1: able to a process information quickly and able to be
Speaker 1: get themselves mentally ready to hit a shot or throw
Speaker 1: a pitch or taken a bat in a short amount
Speaker 1: of time. That is a talent and a skill and
Speaker 1: one that should be rewarded because that's a huge differentiator
Speaker 1: right mentally being that player. I always use this comparison.
Speaker 1: I saw KVV Kevin Bev Balkenberg use this as in
Speaker 1: an article he wrote about slow play on No Laying
Speaker 1: Up dot com. But the idea of like what made
Speaker 1: Tom Brady the greatest quarterback of all time was his
Speaker 1: ability to process a defense in a split second, be
Speaker 1: able to read a defense, understand his progressions, and throw
Speaker 1: the pass faster. You know, there's a load of people
Speaker 1: who had more physical traits for physical attributes like every year, Like,
Speaker 1: what's the big discourse this year with the NFL draft
Speaker 1: this this week this weekend is can Anthony Richardson? Like?
Speaker 1: Is he he has these physical traits? But can he
Speaker 1: go through the progressions? Can he run an offense? Can
Speaker 1: he handle the new Like when you remove all the time,
Speaker 1: if you remove the pass rush and the need to
Speaker 1: throw the ball and go through these progressions quickly, all
Speaker 1: of a sudden, Tom Brady might not have been the
Speaker 1: greatest quarterback of all time. That is important in sports.
Speaker 1: That's the same thing with why is Lebron great? Like
Speaker 1: Lebron like you watch him at age? What is he
Speaker 1: thirty nine or thirty eight now? And you watch him
Speaker 1: like just like they just get into the exact thing
Speaker 1: they want all the time, and he just hunts and
Speaker 1: picks apart defenses. It's not quite as prevalent as it
Speaker 1: used to be, but his ability to just and it's
Speaker 1: in a twenty four second shot clock. That's what makes
Speaker 1: NBA offense so incredible is the finite amount of time
Speaker 1: that they have to run the offense. How much different
Speaker 1: would the NBA look if there was no time?
Speaker 2: You know, well, you'd have a four corners offense which
Speaker 2: you used to have, like, Okay, we have an eight
Speaker 2: point lead with ten minutes left, Like why in the
Speaker 2: world would we shoot, Like we don't have to. I mean, so,
Speaker 2: just to bring it back to golf real quickly, competitive
Speaker 2: decisiveness and decision making in a specified amount of time
Speaker 2: should be rewarded. At the Masters this year, on Sunday
Speaker 2: walk in the final group, rom and Kopka Brooks hits
Speaker 2: his drive at a way left into the trees. I'm
Speaker 2: almost positive this, yeah, And so I was probably with
Speaker 2: KVB standing there on the left side of the fairway
Speaker 2: and he's got this evaluation to make and he's gonna
Speaker 2: have to punch back out right. It's a birdie hole.
Speaker 2: This is a disastrous things ramist and to turn the momentum.
Speaker 2: And I just remember he got in there, he looked
Speaker 2: at it, he talked to his caddy, he went through
Speaker 2: the thing, and I'm, you know, up ahead a little
Speaker 2: bit but trying to keep an eye into the trees,
Speaker 2: and all of a sudden, the ball's coming out, and
Speaker 2: I was like, oh my goodness. Like he went in there,
Speaker 2: he evaluated all the information that he needed to evaluate,
Speaker 2: and he made a decision and he whacked it out
Speaker 2: and it was a good like you know, whatever he
Speaker 2: made par I think, but it why, you know, we
Speaker 2: can I'm not gonna list the players who would have
Speaker 2: gone in there and spent ten minutes, but it's a
Speaker 2: longer list that would have gone in there and then
Speaker 2: spent you know, seventy five seconds and it and it
Speaker 2: moved the game. It was it was I just remember
Speaker 2: being struck by Wow. No one does things that fast
Speaker 2: that that should be, that should be more the norm
Speaker 2: than than the opposite.
Speaker 1: A couple of years ago, I you know, when Bryson
Speaker 1: was being accused of slow play. I went to the
Speaker 1: US Open in a time I spent like a Friday
Speaker 1: timing every every player in the group for nine holes
Speaker 1: and it was him, JT, Kevin Kissinger, and Kevin Kissinger
Speaker 1: was incredible. I mean, like, you know, kind of in
Speaker 1: the vein of Matt Fitzpatrick where he was just ready
Speaker 1: to hit after you know, if he was the second
Speaker 1: player to hit, he was hitting in like twelve seconds.
Speaker 1: You know, Bryson was always and he's done a great
Speaker 1: job of speeding up. I think that you know, you
Speaker 1: have to give him props. He has sped up his
Speaker 1: pace of play from this moment, but he was he
Speaker 1: was taking one and a half two minutes to hit
Speaker 1: a shot every every time. But what I noticed, everybody's
Speaker 1: slow at the green. And that's perhaps where skill is
Speaker 1: most would be most rewarded of, Like I can read
Speaker 1: a green quickly and be confident and stand over a shot.
Speaker 1: And if you think about where golf like, you know
Speaker 1: what happened with the Masters to go back to this,
Speaker 1: and I think this is where it really started to bubble.
Speaker 1: This discourse is bubbled and blown up to where you know,
Speaker 1: we're getting to p point where I don't think, like
Speaker 1: golf like people are going to stand for this for
Speaker 1: much longer with how you know, like something has to
Speaker 1: happen eventually because you know, Brooks and Rom are putting
Speaker 1: on they're getting to the green. I saw like John
Speaker 1: Rom's caddy was visually upset on the fifteenth green about
Speaker 1: Patrick Cantley and Victor Hovelin and to can't lay in
Speaker 1: Hovelin's credit like they were waiting on fifteen. Yes, you
Speaker 1: know this, this this was a This wasn't just a
Speaker 1: Patrick cantlay problem. Is he a slow player? Absolutely, But
Speaker 1: there are probably one hundred slow players on the PGA Tour.
Speaker 1: So anyways, he goes to the green at like, uh, Rom,
Speaker 1: they're on the fifteenth green. Those guys are walking to
Speaker 1: the sixteenth green. They're on the sixteenth green and they're
Speaker 1: still putting on the fifteenth green. They finished putting. Rom
Speaker 1: obviously has opened up this lead at this point. Kepkaz
Speaker 1: like looks just like flabbergast when he's on the sixteenth tee.
Speaker 1: They walk to the sixteenth te not a close walk,
Speaker 1: I mean it's forty fifty yards. They get there, Rob
Speaker 1: goes to the bathroom, comes back. Patrick Cantley, who's out
Speaker 1: still has not hit his putt. Yes, and that's just
Speaker 1: that can't happen.
Speaker 2: It can't happen. It can't happen. And if you take
Speaker 2: I mean, I think this debate in golf can be
Speaker 2: applied at all levels, like the we've both played with
Speaker 2: people who watch whoever else is in the group do
Speaker 2: whatever they're doing with their shot, and then they begin
Speaker 2: their preparation for their shot. Okay, what's my yard? Like
Speaker 2: just stop it stop get ready, like, don't that's happening
Speaker 2: over there, don't worry about it. Yeah, I love playing
Speaker 2: with the regular people that I play with, who I know.
Speaker 2: If they're having a problem an issue, they're they're solving
Speaker 2: it quickly and not worried about where I'm on the
Speaker 2: left side of the fairway. We're all your look across, Okay,
Speaker 2: he's not ready, I'm playing right now. Why can't Why
Speaker 2: can't that be the flow of a professional round of golf?
Speaker 2: And that's from t to green? Whatever is it hard
Speaker 2: to read a pot? And like should they take some time?
Speaker 2: You don't want to have guys just like getting up
Speaker 2: there and doing stuff they're not prepared for, because that
Speaker 2: wouldn't bring out the best performance. But it's it is
Speaker 2: out of control. And the example that you you used
Speaker 2: at fifteen and sixteen is a.
Speaker 1: Good one in your in you're just having watched this
Speaker 1: baseball and play out and covering golf. You know, what
Speaker 1: would you like to see golf do? What do you
Speaker 1: you know? Obviously they have the distance thing is on
Speaker 1: the table. It looks like it's gonna happen at some
Speaker 1: you know events, which obviously will relieve pace of play.
Speaker 1: If less guys can get home into they're less driveable
Speaker 1: part fours that will relieve pace of play. But you
Speaker 1: know what, what else do you think the baseball should
Speaker 1: be looking at.
Speaker 2: That's a really interesting question because I'm still kind of
Speaker 2: processing the first month of pretty unprecedented. I mean, you
Speaker 2: have to go back to nineteen sixty eight when they
Speaker 2: lowered I'm sorry, sixty nine, after the year the pitcher.
Speaker 2: In sixty eight they made a uniformly lower mound because
Speaker 2: pitchers had too great an advantage and there was less
Speaker 2: action in the game. There's so much to digest with
Speaker 2: what's happened over you know, only the first twenty eight
Speaker 2: days of the season that what next steps might be
Speaker 2: are a little bit hard to envision. They are trying
Speaker 2: in an independent league something called the double hook rule,
Speaker 2: which would incentifize teams to leave their starters in longer.
Speaker 2: The idea is, if you pull your starter before he's
Speaker 2: completed five innings, you lose the designated hitter and the
Speaker 2: pitch has to hit in that that's the pitcher spot.
Speaker 1: So that would be amazing.
Speaker 2: It's really interesting. Way to get back to that thing
Speaker 2: I was talking about at the very beginning of what's
Speaker 2: the narrative of any day of baseball is like, Okay,
Speaker 2: who's pitching? If that person's not going to be you know,
Speaker 2: there's this whole idea of the Tampa Bay Rays and
Speaker 2: other teams using openers, essentially starting a pitcher who's they
Speaker 2: know is only going to pitch two innings and building
Speaker 2: a game plan of guys that are only going to
Speaker 2: pitch one or one or two innings. That takes away
Speaker 2: that starting pitcher narrative completely. Maybe that double hook rule
Speaker 2: is the next thing that you you stick in there
Speaker 2: to Again, you're not trying to do to get to
Speaker 2: the game to a place that it's never been before.
Speaker 2: You're actually trying to restore it to how it always
Speaker 2: was played. I mean, if you Tom Boswell, who had
Speaker 2: my job at the Washington Post for ever and ever
Speaker 2: and ever and covered baseball and go as well. He's retired,
Speaker 2: but he wrote a column going into this baseball season
Speaker 2: after having watched spring training games saying, essentially, this isn't new.
Speaker 2: The pitch clock isn't making the game something we haven't
Speaker 2: seen before. It's actually restoring it to the way it
Speaker 2: was played forty and fifty years ago, which is refreshing
Speaker 2: and which I think would be perfect for golf, because
Speaker 2: you know, Jack Nicholas didn't stand over a shot for
Speaker 2: ninety seconds or two minutes. He evaluated, stepped up and
Speaker 2: executed it to the best of visibility in that in
Speaker 2: that moment. That should be rewarded somehow.
Speaker 1: Yeah, And I think something that you just hit on
Speaker 1: is all these all these leagues, with the exception of golf.
Speaker 1: I mean, the NBA is constantly experimenting in it's like
Speaker 1: lower level leagues, you know they are, and the idea
Speaker 1: that MLB is now in this era of experimentation. You know,
Speaker 1: the NFL changed his rules regularly. The only sport that's
Speaker 1: just like kind of just no, we're not doing anything.
Speaker 1: We aren't going to try and evolve at this point,
Speaker 1: you know, and any any of the only evolution that
Speaker 1: has been introduced has been met with sharp, you know,
Speaker 1: detractors criticism is golf.
Speaker 2: And I think when you strip away, I mean, I
Speaker 2: talked earlier about the protectors of the game in both
Speaker 2: baseball and golf, and I feel like, for whatever reason
Speaker 2: those sports have, they have such a reverence for their history,
Speaker 2: right like in baseball even more than golf, the numbers
Speaker 2: of their history and anything that could alter what sixty
Speaker 2: one homers by Roger Marris meant in nineteen sixty one
Speaker 2: or any of those, you know, the career home run
Speaker 2: mark that you debate, like, is Hank Aaron still the
Speaker 2: all time greatest because Bonds was on steroids. Blah blah blah.
Speaker 2: Anything that threatens that kind of sanctity of that history
Speaker 2: is seen as evil. I do think if there's a
Speaker 2: relationship between the two sports and the problems that they
Speaker 2: have with an aging audience and an audience that, you know,
Speaker 2: a younger audience that wants to see more and more action,
Speaker 2: is baseball has now stripped away some of that reverence
Speaker 2: for this is the way that we've always done things.
Speaker 2: Therefore we will always do them going forward. Golf might
Speaker 2: want to look over there and say, Okay, they had
Speaker 2: a similar They honored their history and valued their history
Speaker 2: in a similar way. They've done some pretty radical things,
Speaker 2: and they that radical stuff involved buy in from all parties,
Speaker 2: reluctant by in in some cases, but people that have
Speaker 2: come around and understand it, couldn't we do the same
Speaker 2: in the name of saving our sport, not just at
Speaker 2: the profession level, but at the recreational level and getting
Speaker 2: more people involved, because you know, we all make those
Speaker 2: evaluations when we're gonna go play golf. Am I gonna
Speaker 2: play on a Saturday morning when I know it's going
Speaker 2: to kill you know, I'm not going to be home
Speaker 2: until two or three because this round is going to
Speaker 2: take five hours. Like that's a real life evaluation that
Speaker 2: has nothing to do with whether TV producers watching Patrick
Speaker 2: Cantlay stand over a ball for two minutes, like, but
Speaker 2: they're related.
Speaker 1: Yeah, I mean absolutely, it's uh. I think one of
Speaker 1: the things like that's interesting about golf is I think
Speaker 1: the people that hold the most reverence for the history
Speaker 1: of the game are the ones that want to change
Speaker 1: the most.
Speaker 2: That could be true, I mean it, and you think
Speaker 2: about it, like because whatever, like Jack Nicholas and Gary
Speaker 2: Player and Arnold Palmer when he was alive and now
Speaker 2: Tom Watson. They do the honorary shot thing at the Masters,
Speaker 2: and they come in for a press conference like early
Speaker 2: that Thursday morning, and of course they're they're asked state
Speaker 2: of the game questions because their their opinion matters. If
Speaker 2: you go back to the thirteenth hole, you know they're
Speaker 2: talking about, well, we're evaluating whether to hit four iron
Speaker 2: into that green. We would like these guys to have
Speaker 2: that same evaluation. It's you know, eagling it with eight
Speaker 2: iron in your hand is not the same. So you're right,
Speaker 2: like the historical figures are hyper aware that the challenge
Speaker 2: is not the same that they faced both on a
Speaker 2: day to day basis and a shot by shot basis.
Speaker 2: Restoring that would be would be good for everybody.
Speaker 1: I think last question and we'll get you out of here.
Speaker 1: Thank you so much for the time. But do you
Speaker 1: think a pitch clock or a shot clock is feasible
Speaker 1: for golf?
Speaker 2: I think you have to you. Instead of phrasing it
Speaker 2: that way, I think it should be phrased why is
Speaker 2: it not feasible? Like why can we not be aggressive
Speaker 2: in a address identifying and addressing a problem that is
Speaker 2: affecting the game from the top level to the entry level,
Speaker 2: and that includes players who young players who are really
Speaker 2: into golf. If you're lucky enough to have hooked somebody
Speaker 2: on the sport and they're watching a round of golf
Speaker 2: and they see player A, B, and C on TV
Speaker 2: taking all this time, evaluating all these things and not
Speaker 2: stepping up there and decisively hitting a shot, what are
Speaker 2: they going to do? You mimic? You know, if you're
Speaker 2: a left handed hitter as a kid, you're mimicking Ken
Speaker 2: Griffy's stance, right like you you learn from your heroes.
Speaker 2: If you're learning that taking however much time you want
Speaker 2: is rewarded or not penalized, then there's the train has left.
Speaker 2: It's it's it's impossible to stop. I think golf should
Speaker 2: be asking the question, we know we have this problem,
Speaker 2: we have to take steps to reel it in. For
Speaker 2: you know, we have to figure out logistically what does
Speaker 2: a shot clock mean? How do we penalize people? How
Speaker 2: do we implement it? Rather than saying well, it's so
Speaker 2: it would be so hard, I think you got to
Speaker 2: get more aggressive about it.
Speaker 1: Yeah, if you if you're worried about solving a problem
Speaker 1: and the solution being too hard, is you're thinking about
Speaker 1: it completely the wrong way. And I think, like you know,
Speaker 1: important anecdote to what you said, you know, the distance debate.
Speaker 1: A lot of what's fueled some of the something needs
Speaker 1: to change is looking at college golf and seeing, wow,
Speaker 1: these kids are longer than the PGA tour, Like this
Speaker 1: is a problem that is going to continue. You hear
Speaker 1: Mike Wan talk about this, right, you know, it is
Speaker 1: just going to keep becoming a bigger problem because the
Speaker 1: kids are longer and longer. The same thing for pace
Speaker 1: to play. If you go to a college event, it
Speaker 1: is so slow. If you go to a junior event,
Speaker 1: so slow. And it is just become going to continue
Speaker 1: to become a bigger problem with the sport because it
Speaker 1: is a self perpetuating problem, and.
Speaker 2: You're you're in there, somewhere in there, you're stifling creativity
Speaker 2: and individuality because you're creating these robotic you know, go
Speaker 2: back to baseball. If you're fetishizing velocity in baseball, it's
Speaker 2: the same thing as fetishizing length in golf. It takes
Speaker 2: some you know, finesse. Pitchers are not They don't get
Speaker 2: a Jamie Moyer doesn't get a shot anymore. Greg Maddox,
Speaker 2: you know who I'm sure you loved. I mean, does
Speaker 2: he not get a shot? He's not valued the same way.
Speaker 2: He doesn't get the chance to.
Speaker 1: What about Mark Burley, Yeah, exactly, the best best player
Speaker 1: a lot. When you saw Mark Burley is on the mound,
Speaker 1: You're just like, ah, this is awesome. It's gonna be
Speaker 1: like a two hour game.
Speaker 2: Hour and fifty five minutes and he's gonna allow three
Speaker 2: hits and this is gonna be awesome. There's there's fun
Speaker 2: in that, and there's creativity and individuality, and it's not
Speaker 2: just you know, some six' five broad shouldered kid from
Speaker 2: the prairie who's thrown ninety nine with a ninety two
Speaker 2: mile an hour slider that dives at the bottom of the.
Speaker 2: Zone it's the same thing As, okay everybody hits a three. Forty,
Speaker 2: now you, know there's not as much individuality and, creativity
Speaker 2: and the characters are are less distinct when everybody does
Speaker 2: the same, thing and the skills are our level across the.
Speaker 1: Board all, Right, barry thank you so much for coming.
Speaker 1: On that was. GREAT i you, KNOW i thought this
Speaker 1: might be a fun conversation and it exceeded WHAT i was.
Speaker 1: Hoping you people can find You you're you're right at
Speaker 1: The Washington. Post it's a publication a few people may
Speaker 1: have heard. Of you also have written a few books about,
Speaker 1: Baseball The, Grind Inside Baseball's Endless season And National, Pastime sports,
Speaker 1: politics and the return of baseball To, WASHINGTON. Dc so
Speaker 1: people can find you On twitter and find your writing
Speaker 1: at very very many.
Speaker 2: OUTLETS i appreciate you, Plugging, matt and thanks for handing
Speaker 2: having Me. Andy it was a fun.
Speaker 1: Conversation, Yeah i'll see you see you at THE Us.
Speaker 2: Open yeah sounds. Good all, right.
Speaker 1: Thank you for listening to another edition of The Friday.
Speaker 1: Podcast today's episode was edited By Matt. Rushes thank, You.
Speaker 1: Matt we are gonna be on the. Road we got
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