MLB Commissioner Bud Selig on Friday addressed a host of league issues and suggested that baseball has "never been more popular," despite detractors suggesting it is not as popular among younger generations, according to Adam Rubin of ESPN N.Y. Selig said that MLB "again will have an international presence next season." Selig: "We'll play somewhere next year which I think will surprise people. We're working on a series of things now." He also wants an int'l draft "as part of the next labor agreement." Selig: "I would hope it's done certainly during the next labor negotiation. Absolutely. The draft was meant to equalize things. It's done very well. And I think the international draft should be a part of that." The commissioner also addressed the length of games, but he "does not think it is a problem." Selig: "They're not getting longer. We're the same as last year. We're right at three hours." Meanwhile, Selig insisted that the league's instant replay system "is going well." Selig: "For a new system, this has been remarkable. And they're getting it right. Other sports have had replay systems that are far from perfect. So I feel very good about it" (ESPNNY.com, 5/3).
IS PACE A PROBLEM? The WALL STREET JOURNAL's Brian Costa noted last season, at the request of Selig, the "perennially slow-paced Red Sox formed a committee of seven team executives to study" the length-of-games issue and "recommend changes for the league as a whole." The Red Sox "are only about halfway done with the project." Though the Red Sox are "trying to quantify them in extensive detail, the causes of slow play are no mystery." Those causes include batters "pausing to fuss with their gloves, pitchers stepping off the rubber or coaches ambling out to the mound for a chat." Add in a "variety of smaller factors, including MLB's new instant-replay system, and it all adds up to a game that requires more patience from a society that has less of it." The "only real question is whether anyone in baseball is willing [to] press for the kinds of dramatic changes in rules and enforcement that will make the game move faster than this generation of players is comfortable with" (WALL STREET JOURNAL, 5/2). Stats LLC last week said that the average time for games this season was 3 hours, 8 minutes, which is 13 minutes longer than the average game time in '10. In Denver, Patrick Saunders wrote Selig and his successor "should step in and make some dramatic changes sooner rather than later" (DENVER POST, 5/4).
