UPDATE: On Monday, after this story had been published, Major League Baseball announced it had decided “to defer the implementation of a pitch timer and a between-batter timer in 2018 in order to provide players with an opportunity to speed up the game without the use of those timers.”



CLEARWATER, Fla. — Sometime this week, Major League Baseball will implement an in-game clock on its sport for the first time. A pitch clock, perhaps 20 seconds, will be tested in spring exhibition games and mandated during the season, with penalties of balls or strikes. There are doubts about how it will be enforced, whether it will shorten the average length of games, or if this is even worth the level of consternation it has generated.



For the poets, baseball is idyllic because it mimics the rhythms of daily life. It has its own pace. No one tells baseball how to move.



For the smartphone generation, baseball is often tedious. The gratification is not...