There are moves afoot in high places to change rules in golf tournaments, baseball games and other sports events to save time. That is more proof that we have gotten too busy in this country.
Most of us can’t do all those relaxing things our parents did like fishing, playing Rook, making homemade ice cream or swinging on the front porch because we can’t work it into our hectic schedules.
These computers, laptops, cell phones and other things that were supposed to save us time all have clocks and calendars on them. They alert us all day every day with beeps and buzzers that we are supposed to be somewhere doing something.
When I was younger, we could get away from work once in a while to play a round of golf or watch a ballgame.
Now these folks who are worried that there might be a wasted minute or two during enjoyable events like golf and baseball are trying to cut back on that leisure time.
There is a proposal to install pitch clocks to keep pitchers from taking over 20 seconds between pitches. Fans would miss out on a lot of spitting and scratching, which is part of the game.
Some other movers and shakers want another clock to make sure breaks between innings never exceed two minutes and five seconds. That’s not enough time to get a hot dog at the concession stand and put mustard and relish on it.
They are even talking about just waving batters down to first base instead of pitching to them for intentional walks. That would take some excitement out of the sport.
I have seen batters jump across the plate to hit those wide pitches on intentional walks, and more than one pitcher has thrown those balls over a catcher’s head to advance a runner on a wild pitch.
One more of the many proposed rules changes that is worthy of mention is a plan to automatically put a runner on second base in extra innings. Kids in sandlot games would have better judgment than to adopt that rule even if they do it in the big leagues.
Some bigwigs in professional golf who think that sport is taking too long are considering letting players just move their ball out of bunkers instead of making them hit it from the sand.
To be honest, guys I have played with have been doing that for years, and it didn’t make our games any shorter.
There is also talk about reducing the time you can look for a ball in the woods from five minutes to three minutes and about giving players just 40 seconds to hit a shot.
The rule about how long you can search for a ball in the woods would obviously increase cheating among those of us who are accustomed to wading around in the weeds for a few minutes before taking a ball out of our pocket, throwing it down and “finding” it.
These time-saving proposals remind me of a friend who said he wanted to get a microwave fireplace so he could enjoy a relaxing evening by the fire in six minutes.
Thinking back to the times my dad took me down the street from our neighborhood to semi-pro games in the big green baseball park in Springhill, I never thought those games were too long. I was always sad when they ended.
My dad and I used to sit on our screened-in front porch and listen to St. Louis Cardinals games on a plastic portable Philco radio. We had iced tea and pimento cheese sandwiches, and the games flew by.
He would take me and some of my friends to Shreveport for Texas League games. Those trips and ballgames seemed way too short even when we traveled on winding, hilly two-lane roads.
When I took my own sons to major league games at the Houston Astrodome and old Arlington Park in their summers out of school, we went early and stayed late and never thought about the time.
Even before my older son Randy started to school, he went with me to Greater New Orleans Open golf tournaments. We followed Jack Nicklaus, Tony Lema and Chi-Chi Rodriguez all day and could have stayed hours longer.
My granddaughters go with me now to softball and baseball games and never want to leave. They will be upset if somebody does something foolish to make the games shorter.
REPRINTED FROM THE NATCHITOCHES TIMES