This is a new one.
Pace of play has been a big sticking point in Major League Baseball, with commissioner Rob Manfred drawing the ire of pitchers and catchers alike with a new limit on mound visits.
As a result, there has been a slew of theories thrown out as to other ways baseball games could be shortened.
Mike Krukow — a retired pitcher who now serves as a color commentator on San Francisco Giants broadcasts — has done some thinking about it, and he has a theory that hasn’t been tossed around too much, if at all: Put ads on the uniforms.
So how would this help? In his opinion, by putting ads on the uniforms, you have less of a need for television advertisements, which would shorten the time between innings devoted to commercials and in turn the game would shorten.
“I don’t like long innings during the playoffs, where there’s (a) two-minute, 45-second break,” Krukow said on KNBR’s “Tolbert & Lund” on Wednesday, as transcribed by The Score. “To me, it’s obvious. If you want to speed things up, cut the (inning breaks) back down to two minutes or 1:45 and put advertisements on the uniforms. I have no problem with that. I didn’t have a problem wearing a rum advertisement when I played in Puerto Rico.”
Certainly a different way of thinking.
Of course, advertisements on uniforms are not an entirely new venture in sports. It long has been customary in NASCAR, and the NBA started putting ads on its uniforms recently as well.
Who knows if it would ever come to fruition, but hey, it’s another theory to put on the table.
