Well no, not particularly.

The Boston Globe recently ran an article about the increasing length of baseball games and what could be done about it.  I made some suggestions about ways to improve baseball a while ago.  Surprisingly, none of these suggestions have been adopted.  The article mentions a good rule they had in the minors for a while that I hadn’t heard of–a strike was called if a batter stepped out of the batter’s box if he hadn’t swung at the previous pitch.  Great idea!  Nothing came of it.  And nothing has come of the existing major league rule that a pitcher has to deliver the ball to the batter within 12 seconds if there’s no one on base.  Why don’t umpires enforce this rule?

Even at its best, baseball is a deliberate game, with far more pauses than action.  At two-and-half-hours the game is delightful; at three-and-a-half hours you can only have the game on in the background while you’re doing something else–blogging, for example (Aceves has just walked the bases loaded vs. Tampa).

And then there’s hockey.  Bob Ryan of the Globe said the last minute of Game 4 of the Bruins-Penguins series probably took two years off his life, and I have to agree.  Hockey has its own problems, but lack of action is generally not one of them.

Let’s see if I can survive the Stanley Cup finals.