Tough Love

It's about time.

Major League Baseball is losing fans by the minute.

Every second could mean years.

The later, the greater the loss.

The American Pastime, the only major sport without a clock, will find it's time is up sooner than social security.

Yes. It's time to shorten the game to seven innings.

Forget the records; the don't mean anything now, and certainly won't mean anything the further down the national depth chart it plummets.

Yet, the answer has been in front of us for decades, but nobody seems to have found the courage to put their name on the back of the idea.

Well one guy did--an unnamed baseball exec anonymously sharing his idea with ESPN's Buster Olney. And good thing, too; the Flat Hardball Society was ready with 34" Louisville Sluggers for shots heard 'round the baseball world.

Perhaps they'd be the cast in the same white cloak as those who preferred baseball segregated before Jackie Robinson and Branch Rickey changed everything.

Unfortunately, they didn't change anyone's attitudes toward the records. Oh no. That honor was stolen by Jose Canseco.

For decades, Babe Ruth was the Home Run King, until a man walked through a door only Mr. Robinson could open and took his crown. And many privileged to pay to see the Bambino fought the idea of Henry Aaron passing Ruth just like the Boston Red Sox ignored the game's changing color guard.

Ruth. Cobb. DiMaggio. Cy. Wagner. Wilson. Foxx. Gehrig. Yet few second thoughts to names like Cool Papa, Paige or Gibson.

No, not the guy with the limp. The guy with the gift.

Maybe it was Ruth who was blessed with a present of segregation. Instead of Ruthian feats, the term Gibsonian would have earned marquee status in generations of newspaper columns.

But we'll never know. Even the Negro League records are met with unfair but traditional qualifying mechanisms that snuff any attempt at legitimate debate.

In other words, the hallowed records were hollow long before the needle and the damage done.

Roids. Race. Baseball has no place other than our hearts anymore. But the pastime will fail to be passed onto the next generation who can't stay up past bedtime to watch over three-hours of ball in a Moneyball era of high counts and team-owned networks vying for primetime every time.

It's time. In fact, it's well past time.

And like so many mistakes of baseball's past, the answer is more obvious than the idea of race funneling players into different leagues.

Little League plays six inning games. High School plays seven, as do college baseball and minor league clubs on double-days.

Pro boxing even shaved their heavyweight fights from 15 rounds to a dozen. Now, 12 is the norm and generations after X have no idea matches went another nine minutes--or for perspective, a fifth quarter.

Sure, this writer will get hate mail. But unlike Hank Aaron's, this will be returned with condescension.

In 20 years, nobody will be laughing when your kid doesn't call you during a Game Seven while your grandkids sleep without dreams of a Red Sox October or a 30th piece of pinstriped hardware.

You'll be watching by yourself on some fledgling cable sports network wondering why your kid doesn't feel the same about the game.

Only one American sport holds the distinction of "The Game." The NFL may now be king, but will never have baseball's records (which the rest of you still believe exist), curses or lore.

And part of The Game's storied history of streaks and series is the adage of "momentum (being) only as good as tomorrow's starting pitcher."

The Game of Tomorrow is only as strong as its next generation.

And if you're already tired of how long a game takes in 2014, imagine what your kid thinks at 14.