In a rare moment of intelligence, both FOX and Bud Selig realized that World Series games that end around 1 in the morning East Coast time is not a great thing as with the exception of the team's die hard fans and insomniacs, nobody is actually watching the game when it ends. So they decided to move the starting times from 8:30 to a little before 8.  That’s great and all but the reality of the matter is that all this will mean is that the games will end around 12:30 instead of 1.  So with that, I have a proposal to make sure games actually end sometime between the Leno show and the Conan show-- limiting managers to only two pitching changes an inning.  Call it "the Tony LaRussa Rule."

The problem with playoff baseball (and you could argue with even regular season games) is that the game comes to a crashing halt when it goes into the late innings and managers start in with the pitching changes.  First there's the Left-Handed Pitching Specialist.  Once he's faced his only batter, in comes the Right-Handed PitchingSpecialist, followed quickly by the Wednesday Evening Pitching Specialist and then the Waning Moon Pitching Specialist.  Throw in the fact that every pitching break brings with it about five minutes of commercials and promos for really lame FOX shows, innings often last for hours.

What this means is that a manager can do the lefty/righty pitching change but if they do, they can't put in another reliever so if the second pitcher starts getting hammered, there's nothing the manager can do about it.  So while they can still do it, they do so at their own peril.  The only way they could make a change in the middle of the inning would be to switch the pitcher with a fielder which is a win-win for the viewer because that would be awesome.

Now, I realize that there'll still be reasons for games to go on forever (the time it takes for pitchers and batters to set up, commercials, in game steroid tests) but that's baseball.  And I also realize traditionalists will get upset but not bringing in six relievers in one inning is actually the tradition.  The whole specialist thing only started up in the 80's and it didn't really get out of hand until the 90's.  And if Tony LaRussa complains, screw it-- I hate that dude.