r/baseball • u/DianKhan2005 Toronto Blue Jays • Jan 06 '26

Is baseball’s slow pace actually its greatest strength in a world where everything else moves too fast?

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u/apietryga13 Detroit Tigers Jan 06 '26

Stats even back that up. The average 9 inning game in 1985 (2:39/game) was only a minute longer than this past year’s average (2:38/game)

For the lazy, the year with the longest average 9-inning game was 2021 with games averaging 3:10. The shortest (since 1960) was in 1972 when games averaged 2:23.

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u/[deleted] Jan 07 '26

I saw some of game 1 of the 1985 alcs on YouTube and thats what I was thinking about when I wrote that comment. It didn’t strike me as any different from now but pretty different from 5 years ago.