Olympic baseball rule change alert

Posted by Coley Ward on Wednesday August 06th 2008, 1:44 pm - filed in News reel

You know the problem with baseball? Games take too long. Sometimes, games can go into extra-innings and last for hours!

Fortunately, that won’t be the case at this year’s Olympics. The International Baseball Federation has that problem licked. New rule alert!

Each team’s at-bat in the 11th inning and beyond will begin with runners on first and second bases. Teams may start the 11th at any point in their batting order under format changes announced Friday by the International Baseball Federation and adopted in time for next month’s Beijing Games.

…

Federation president Harvey Schiller said the extra-innings change was adopted to save time.

“Extra-inning contests can bring about the most exciting results for players and fans, but such circumstances also make it difficult in the context of the Olympic program,” Schiller said. “We must demonstrate to the International Olympic Committee (that) not only does our game belong alongside the other great sports of the world, but our sport is manageable from a television and operational standpoint.”

This is a good start, but I still think baseball would benefit from trampolines and maybe some paintball guns.

Via j-walkblog.com


21 Comments »
Tagged:  China, Olympics, rule

Share this post:
  • del.icio.us
  • Facebook
  • Google
  • SphereIt
  • TwitThis
  • StumbleUpon
  • Fark
  • Tumblr
  • Digg