Evening Republican, Volume 18, Number 214, Rensselaer, Jasper County, 10 September 1914 — FOR SHORT DOUBLE-HEADERS [ARTICLE]

FOR SHORT DOUBLE-HEADERS

Critic Advocates Seven Innings Each Where Two Contests are Played on Same Afternoon. Why not limit the double-header games to seven innings each? It’s a scheme that has been tried out in the Southern leagues with great success. Two seven-inning games in one afternoon would give the average fan just about as much baseball as he could comfortably absorb. It wouldn’t force the ball player to the extreme limit of his endurance, and, best of all, it would enable the fan to get home in time for a warm dinner. Cutting the double-header games to seven Innings would do no one harm. It would do plenty of good. Cutting off four innings from an afternoon’s baseball session would mean lessening the playing period about one hour and. therefore, the pastime would end before darkness settled over the land. The season of double-headers is now upon us. Every fan is keen about taking in a bargain bill, but along about the fourth or fifth inning of the second game the exhibition becomes monotonous. Of course, the greatest ma-, jority of the fans stick to the bitter finish, but they stay not so much because their baseball appetite isn’t satisfied, but because they, want to see just how the game will finish. Most double-headers begin about 2 p. m., allowing something over two hours for each game and a 15-minute intermission between combats. It means that play doesn’t end until about 6:30. That means that the fan doesn’t get home until front 7:15 to 8 p. m., owing to the delay in getting out of the crowded park and the usual delay caused by the sldw moving of fi. fleet of special street cars. And every housewife is fully agreed that 7:15 to 8 p. m. is “too darned late for any man to expect his wife to keep dinner simmering.” If the games were cut two innings each the playing period would be lessened about an hour, which would mean that the final innings of the second game would not have to be played by torchlight and that father would get home on time to dine with the rest of the family. The seven-inning double-header idea probably will prove to be a popular one with the fans, and it is likely that If the agitation assumes sufficient voice that the ruling powers in baseball will hear it and amend their laws so that seven-inning double-headers will be the rule starting with the 1916 season.