Run Your 90s
2
Apr
2012
It's great to have got the 2012 National Baseball League season underway. While the Essex Arrows got off to an opening day sweep to top the standings I checked out the London Mets and Harlow Nationals at Finsbury Park.
All in all it was a great start to the year and a split was a fair result, the team that played better catch winning each game. Weird! I'll catch the Nats and Mets later in the season and when I do I hope both teams do a better job executing a few things that are entirely in their control: running their 90s and getting on and off the field.
It takes no talent to hustle. It should be an all-the-time thing, not a some-of-the-time thing. We're not playing 162 games so even more reason to do things right for the few hours we spend playing every week. Moreover, it's about respecting the game. Getting on and off the field creates tempo and can reinforce or change momentum and that's when great things happen. Running hard to First Base puts extra pressure on the defenders.
I think you could have trimmed the time it took to play every game over the weekend if every team had busted it on an off the field. To win favour with fans and TV broadcasters, college baseball in the US has implemented a 90 second limit between innings to reduce the length of games. We might not be playing on tele just yet but everyone is going to benefit by shortening the games...especially by reducing the time between innings.
Such a concept isn't part of the culture in slowpitch but I think it can apply nonetheless. Have you ever played a game that finished in the dark? If you reduced the time between innings by jogging, let alone running on and off the field, you probably could have seen that ball that sneaked through the outfield because it was dark!
Make it a great week!
LC
tagged under: baseball, bbf, season, national baseball league
