Los Angeles Times

Bill Shaikin: There's too much talk about baseball games being too long

The games take too long. How can the sport grow its fan base when the games take so darn long?

Three hours for a regular-season game, longer in the playoffs, almost four hours in the game that crowns the season champion.

Rob Manfred had better do something.

The first thing the commissioner ought to do is to tell the conventional wisdom to take a timeout. Those are the average game times for the NFL.

"The Super Bowl," Dodgers closer Kenley Jansen said, "is four and a half hours."

Jansen is embellishing, but not by much, and he is doing so in the service of the story line that Major League Baseball ought to embrace. Talk up the sport,

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