It was perhaps the strangest baseball game of the Major League season, and that’s saying something. The Red Sox finished off the Kansas City Royals 5-4 in 10 innings on Thursday in a game that had started 16 days earlier.
When heavy rains suspended play Aug. 7 with the score 4-4 in the top of the 10th, the teams decided on Thursday, a mutual off day, to play the rest of it.
Faced with the unusual situation, the Red Sox offered $5 tickets (children were free), $1 hot dogs and other reduced concession prices. They also allowed open seating, so the first fans in the park could choose any seat in the house.
The result was a raucous crowd of about 16,000 that was into the game from start to finish and included mostly children and plenty of Fenway first-timers.
Of course, the game only lasted 12 minutes from the point it restarted. Brock Holt’s RBI single in the bottom of the 10th sent all 16,000 home happy. Even if they hadn’t had a chance to finish that hot dog.
After two-week wait, #RedSox walk it off in 12 minutes.
🔗: https://t.co/2CakeEirCU pic.twitter.com/tJin7glCEc
— Red Sox (@RedSox) August 22, 2019
Lessons to be learned?
Fans’ chief complaints about baseball include the length of games, the pace of play and the expense of going to games.
As Yahoo Sports writes, could it be that the Red Sox offered some possible solutions to all three on Thursday?
Of course, there’s no way to shorten games to 12 minutes. And open seating, while an egalitarian concept, probably will never happen. This is capitalism, after all.
But what about cheaper concessions? And catering more to kids? And yes, what about the years-old problem of games being too long?
How the Red Sox inadvertently solved two of MLB’s biggest problems in one day.
(Via @HannahRKeyser)
➡️ https://t.co/H1Rct0BNgj pic.twitter.com/U63MgtEpC6
— Yahoo Sports MLB (@MLByahoosports) August 23, 2019
So what now?
How to apply those lessons to a full-length game is the billion-dollar question. Cheaper concessions have become a trend across sports. Fans at home have access to HDTV, replays and the comforts of their easy chair and fridge. Teams have to give them a reason to spend money and time at the ballpark.
Lowering ticket prices, especially for children? Why not? Open seating? Maybe not every night, but once or twice a season might be a nice touch.
And, yes, of course, pace of play. Baseball continues to work through its issue with slow-moving games, especially as batters and pitchers become more careful and selective with one another.
But at least for 12 glorious minutes of baseball Thursday, that was no problem at all.
Alex Cora on all the tremendous crowd of kids at Fenway for what turned out to be 12 minutes of baseball: “We gotta remind them that this is not the pace we play. Usually we play four hour games.”
Sir! I must ask that you try to keep your games under 3.5 hours going forward.
— Hannah Keyser (@HannahRKeyser) August 22, 2019
