This installment of The One Board originally appeared in Bowlers Journal International, April, 2023
During Major League Baseball Spring Training, players and fans have been adjusting to the new pitch clock, in which pitchers have 15 seconds to throw their next pitch and batters have to be engaged with the pitchers eight seconds before the expiration of the pitch clock. It’s phrased that way because baseball, like bowling, likes to make things as complicated as possible.
In semi-understandable terms, a batter has to be ready to bat in seven seconds and the pitcher has to pitch in 15. If the batter doesn’t bat, a strike is called on him. If the pitcher doesn’t pitch, a ball is called on him.
Bowling has had, officially if not practically, a shot clock in place for a long time, but the rule is hard to enforce and the penalty is a nominal fine.
In baseball, the enforcement comes from umpires referring to a calibrated clock. In bowling, the enforcement comes from waiting four or five hours for someone to notice, “Hey, that guy is even slower than the rest of us,” at which point a tournament official goes and stands behind that guy for four or five shots that take 20 minutes to roll, then tells the guy to speed it up and qualifying continues as normal. With huge fields and small tournament staffs, enforcing a consistent shot clock is a nearly insurmountable task, especially with the previous round’s cut players lined up at the printer demanding the tournament director’s attention.
The PBA shot clock is 25 seconds long. A player has 25 seconds from the moment it becomes his turn to make his shot. A lot can be done before the clock actually begins: ball wiping, shoe swiping, hand licking, ball-return-perching, to name a few. Doing these types of things in advance of one’s official turn is considered being ready.
Part of this new baseball initiative is attempting to force the batter and pitcher to be ready. Bowling has the same problem. Some players simply aren’t ready when it’s their turn. With the lane-courtesy procedure, one player not being ready can delay multiple pairs, causing one of those unexplained expressway traffic jams that simply clears up at some point with no discernible reason it was ever jammed. A bowling traffic jam generally doesn’t subside until the game ends and players start over on a new pair.
Even for the most meticulous routines and most ardent trusters of the process, 25 seconds is a lot of time (especially considering—prepare yourself for earth-shattering insider info—the routine is often part of the process and thus runs concurrently). Players should be able to adhere to this timeframe without being stalked by the tournament director or lectured by a fellow competitor.
As of now, though, slow play in bowling is almost unenforceable. Baseball has one pitcher and one batter competing at once. Bowling has dozens and sometimes hundreds of players throughout an entire bowling center. During the stepladder finals, it’s not a problem. But during qualifying, a tournament director can’t be enforcing slow play on lane 80 when some guy on lane 16 is just as slow but hasn’t been noticed. That would be, to use a bowling term, unfair.
Is an enforced pitch clock working? The baseball games, on average, are approximately 20 minutes faster than they were a year ago during Spring Training and are now down to approximately two hours and 40 minutes of a bunch of guys in silly outfits standing around until something might happen. Like all sports except one, baseball seems to think shorter games are better. If that’s the goal, then yes, the pitch clock seems to be working.
Baseball’s experiment makes one wonder if a somehow-enforced bowling shot clock would work. If we could emulate baseball and shave 20 minutes off a day’s action, we’d only be asking fans to pay attention and players to be in peak competition mode for 11 hours and 40 minutes a day. Might be worth a try.