Opinion: How America's Pastime Became So Slow

Amidst all this urgent news, the 2019 Major League Baseball season also began this week. Organized baseball worries that the game once considered America's pastime has become slooowww, old, and tedious.

In 1948 — when Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams and Jackie Robinson were on the field — an average 9-inning game lasted 2 hours and 15 minutes. Today, it takes more than 3 hours.

It's not just more commercials and on-field promotions. It's increased analytics. The data that tell managers a certain player might stand a .001 percentage better chance of getting a hit off a certain pitcher, or the reverse, causes managers to stop the game, go to the mound, pull pitchers, pinch-hit for batters, and move players around like Legos.

A 12-year-old who starts to watch a game at 7:10 on a school night might grow a beard before the game is over. Games seem to last longer than the Mueller investigation. The average age of a Major League Baseball television fan has become as old as George Clooney.

And analytics may have made the game more tame. Fewer players try to steal bases these days. It's a high-risk play, with a low success rate, in an era when players are paid more just to stand and clobber the ball.