Everybody raves about the Yankee-Red Sox rivalry, especially since the Red Sox have finally won a couple of World Series. But, is anybody watching the games? It takes three hours to play 5 1/2 innings. The Mets 5-2 defeat of the Washington Nationals has been over since 9:45 PM and the Yanks and Sox play on…..and on.
Last Friday, Yankee pitcher Chien-Ming Wang pitched a complete game two hitter and the game still took 2 hours and 59 minutes to play. The Sunday game which exceeded 4 hours set baseball back 10 years.
Yesterday, baseball celebrated the 61st anniversary of Jackie Robinson breaking baseball’s color barrier with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Much talk was made of the fact that only 8 percent of Major League Baseball players are black.
When regular season games take 4 plus hours to play, why would anybody expect young blacks—or any race for the matter to take up the sport.
John Furgele
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