The Dawdlers

Buy me some peanuts and crackerjack.

I don't care if I never get back.

--from Take Me Out to the Ball Game

The modern baseball fan has good reason to change the words of the old song to "I don't know if I'll ever get back." In growing bigger, big-league baseball has also grown painfully slower as pitchers outwait batters, batters outwait pitchers, managers perform for TV, and umpires examine the ball, the plate and the terrain for dangerous specks of dust.

Stopwatches in hand, a team of timers from Parade magazine attended a recent game between the Milwaukee Braves and the Brooklyn Dodgers to find out where the time goes. The game proved to be the shortest played at Ebbets Field in two years--one hour, 51 minutes*;but the ball was actually in play only 18 minutes 34.7 seconds of that time. Here is how many of the other 92 minutes were spent: Pitcher Don Newcombe used the rosin bag 28 times, dawdling 2 to 18.1 seconds each time, and talked with Catcher Roy Campanella as long as 45 seconds at a huddle.

Batters used up to twelve seconds each time they stepped out of the box.

Umpire "Dusty" Boggess swept off home plate 21 times, using 2 to 5.5 seconds for each sweeping.

Changing sides every half-inning took up 21 minutes, 15.4 seconds.

Two minutes 32.3 seconds went for a rhubarb at third base.

*Shortest major-league game on record took place Sept. 28, 1919 when the Giants beat the Phillies 6-1 in 51 minutes.

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