The History of the Future: 

January 19, 3033:  The Shortening of the Professional Baseball Season

Perhaps old timer Clyde Horsfer best summed up the general state of baseball in the fall of 2032 when he said, "Hell, I remember when baseball games lasted a reasonable amount of time – three, three and a half hours, tops.  Now you can go out to dinner... in another town... and when you get back, it's still in the bottom of the third."

In the summer of 2032, the average length of a regulation nine inning baseball game was well over 14 hours, with the major league record for a nine inning regulation game being set on August 12-14, in a meeting between Seattle and Kansas City that lasted 35 hours and 39 minutes.  Seattle scored the winning run with nobody out in the bottom of the ninth.  Said Commissioner Altuve, "They're just slow.  Everything.  All of 'em.  Between the pitchers taking forever in their windups and the batters always stepping out, and then the umpires having to review every last stinkin' call... it just takes time.  And we're not even talkin' about the commercial breaks between every pitch."

Faced with the reality that baseball games weren't getting any shorter, and at the present rate there soon wouldn't physically be enough time – ever – to play a complete season, the baseball owners unanimously decided at their annual owners' meeting to shorten the 162 game season to just 54 games.  "Ah, it makes sense," said Mick Guido, co-owner of the San Francisco Giants.  "Instead of playing three games over three days, we're now playing just one game over three days.  Everybody wins."

In an unrelated issue, at that year's owners' meeting it was unanimously decided to table discussing concerns about a dramatic decrease in attendance and television viewership.