Saw this item in an interview with Bud Selig that Adam Rubin filed at ESPNNewYork.com:

Although the commissioner keeps close tabs on the length of games, he does not think it is a problem.

“They’re not getting longer,” Selig said. “We’re the same as last year. We’re right at three hours. Actually, this year, we’ve had an interesting group of 2:30, 2:40, 2:45, which proves to me it can be done.

“People talk about the length of the game, and all sporting events, by the way, take much longer. But the fans are turning out in record numbers. When we do a lot of polling, we don’t get that from a lot of our fans. However, having said all that, you bet I’m concerned. I monitor it on a weekly basis.”

OK, who is MLB surveying? It can’t be avid fans. Everyone I talk to complains about the slow-play issue.

Yes, fans are coming to the games in record numbers. I contend that has more do with the ballpark experience. There is an amusement park element of attending a game. Not that there is anything wrong with that.

However, Selig neglects to point out where slow play has its biggest impact: watching games on TV. Ratings, especially for the post-season, are at historic lows.

As I have written many times, much of the decline has to be about what were once 2:30-2:40 games stretching to 3:30-3:40 or more. The long, tedious games become brutal to watch. Viewers, especially the younger demo, are tuning out.

If MLB needs more input for its surveys, I’ll be glad to provide some names.

My latest Chicago Tribune column features an interview with the author of a new biography on Michael Jordan. Comprehensive is an understatement.

You also can access the column via my Twitter feed at @Sherman_Report.

From the column:

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At nearly 700 pages, you might wish Michael Jordan’s career lasted as long as the new biography on him.

“I actually cut 300 pages,” said author Roland Lazenby. “It was a challenge trying to figure out what to take out.”

The pared-down version, “Michael Jordan: The Life,” is set for its official release Tuesday. Books on No. 23 always make for good business, with previous efforts by Sam Smith, David Halberstam, Bob Greene, and even Jordan himself, rising to the top of the bestseller lists.

Yet Lazenby’s book could be viewed as the first truly comprehensive biography on Jordan—at least the most definitive since he retired from basketball for the last time in 2003. Lazenby begins his story by tracing his family’s roots as sharecroppers and moonshiners in North Carolina and goes through his days as a multi-million owner of the Charlotte Bobcats.

“Michael has had a huge, huge life,” Lazenby said. “It’s a business story, a basketball story, a baseball story, a cultural story, a family story, and I could go on.”

Lazenby’s vast research didn’t produce any new stunning revelations about Jordan. It hardly will come as a surprise that he lost $5 million one night gambling in Las Vegas. A bit more surprising is that Lazenby’s source for that information is Adam “Pac Man” Jones.

This book, though, is more about trying to explain what led to him becoming his generation’s Babe Ruth as a sports icon. Lazenby presents a rapid-fire delivery of anecdotes along with insights from those with inside connections that help paint the overall portrait of a highly complex man. The key word for Lazenby is “context.”

“Context helps us understand what we’ve been getting from Michael all these years,” said Lazenby, who previously wrote “Blood on the Horns” about the end of the Bulls dynasty.
“There were many subtle, but sledge-hammer type things that show the urgency that Michael bought to everything.”

Yesterday, I wrote the Los Angeles Clippers are going to be ratings gold for ESPN/ABC and TNT during the playoffs in the wake of Adam Silver’s bold decision. The country will rally around the team, and the story is so big, Clippers games now will attract non-traditional NBA viewers.

Sure enough, the rating for Game 5 of the Clippers-Golden State series was huge. According to Turner Sports, the Clippers’ victory did a 3.7 overnight rating, the highest on cable during the playoffs. The rating was up 37 percent from the comparable game on that night in 2013.

Keep in mind, the game started at nearly 11 p.m. on the East coast. An earlier start would have meant a much higher rating.

I would expect another strong rating on Thursday for Game 6 and an even bigger one if there is a Game 7 on Saturday night.

Also benefiting from this mess is TNT’s Inside The NBA. According to John Ourand of Sports Business Daily, the studio show did a 1.7 rating after the game from 1:30-2:30 a.m.

My latest column from the National Sports Journalism Center stemmed from me watching an excruciatingly dull Chicago-Boston game on Tuesday night. Still working on my goal to eliminate slow play in baseball in our lifetime.

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Tuesday, I came home around 9:30 (Central), and I noticed that Chicago and Boston were tied at 1-1. Since the White Sox, my team since the age of 5, are off to a decent start after last year’s 99-loss disaster, I have some renewed hope. Hey, that’s the beauty of baseball in April.

So I tuned in to see how they would do against the defending world champions. And I watched, and yawned, and watched and yawned, as the game crawled along at a maddening slow pace. Even White Sox announcers Ken Harrelson and Steve Stone took note.

“This game really is moving slow,” Harrelson said.

“That happens a lot with the Red Sox,” Stone said.

Finally, with the few fans and players suffering in the mid-30s weather (welcome to spring in Chicago), the game mercifully ended on a throwing error by shortstop Xander Boegarts, giving the White Sox a 2-1 victory. Perhaps Boegarts had enough of being out in the cold.

I looked at the clock and it was 10:43 p.m. That meant this 2-1 game in nine innings took three hours and 36 minutes to complete. Ridiculous. By the way, the first two runs were homers and the teams combined for only eight hits. So it wasn’t like there were any extended rallies.

Thus another entry in my “JUST PITCH THE BALL” campaign against slow pace in baseball. I believe these excessively long games are killing the sport, especially with the short attention spans of young viewers.

The Chicago-Boston game, though, struck me as particularly relevant in light of the recent comments from MLB commissioner Bud Selig and ESPN president John Skipper during a teleconference prior to opening day.

Here is the exchange:

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Q: David Samson has made a big deal the last few months about the speed of the game, and he’s telling Marlins players they must play the game more quickly and it’s a big concern for him as far as attendance. John, from a TV standpoint, does speed of the game still worry you, and Bud, is there anything more being done to speed the pace up?

Selig: Well, it’s the pace of the game. Speed sometimes is not always the right answer. I’ve read David’s remarks. I have been talking to all of our people, particularly Joe Torre and Tony La Russa and Peter Woodfork and everybody, and yes, I’ve talked to a lot of the umpires, and I’m confident that we’re moving in the right direction, and it’s important that we do continue to do that. Obviously it will depend on the type of game, number of pitching changes, everything else, but yes, that is a matter that I have been talking to a lot of people about.

Skipper: Not a significant concern for us. I agree with the commissioner’s characterization that pace is much more important than speed. I’ve been at an awful lot of very riveting three and a half hour games. It really is about the competition and what’s going on, and we’re confident that as demonstrated over a long tenure that baseball will make the right decisions for the game.

****

Did Skipper really say, “Not a significant concern for us?” I wish Mr. Skipper would come to my house and observe my sports-obsessed teenage boys, who watch ESPN 24/7, and see how they squirm while trying to get through a tedious baseball game. They have checked out, and surely Skipper has data that shows other young fans have, too.

And it isn’t easy for me to stay tuned in, and I have been following baseball for nearly 50 years (very sobering to write that last line).

Maybe, it is because I can remember a 2-1 game taking 2:15, perhaps even less to be completed. And don’t give me pitch counts (there were a combined 22 strikeouts and 10 walks in the Chicago-Boston game). Bob Gibson, Tom Seaver and Ferguson Jenkins all had high strikeout totals, and still managed to complete games in timely fashion.

Skipper should be very concerned about the slow games. I’m sure Fox executives are too, given how World Series games routinely stretch into the four-hour neighborhood. Publically, Skipper may be saying one thing with Selig on a teleconference, but in private, I would be shocked if he isn’t telling the commissioner about the need to pick up the pace.

And if Skipper isn’t, then he is doing a disservice to fans who watch baseball on ESPN. Contrary to what he says, there are very few “riveting” games at 3:30.

I can assure Skipper that there was nothing riveting about a 2-1 game lasting deep into a cold night Tuesday in Chicago. Expect, of course, the final outcome to me since the right Sox won.

Dang Jason, you were snubbed again for the Pulitzer.

If recall last year, Jason Whitlock took considerable flak for writing that he did Pulitzer Prize caliber work in 2012. He even compared himself to Mike Royko. He bemoaned the fact that contest isn’t opening to writers who worked for broadcast sites.

Have to admit, it takes some stones to say you should receive a Pulitzer.

Well, not sure if Whitlock had any worthy entries in 2013. He didn’t promote himself this year. Perhaps as a result, when the Pulitzers were announced this week, I didn’t see his name on the list of winners.

Maybe next year, Jason.

More importantly, there weren’t any Pulitzers awarded to sportswriters. Nothing really new there.

Last year actually was the exception–somewhat. John Branch of the New York Times won his wonderful piece on skiers caught in an avalanche. However, that piece was more about survival than sports. In 2012, Sara Ganim of Harrisburg Patriot-News, a cityside reporter, was awarded the prize for her coverage of the Jerry Sandusky disaster. Again, that was a criminal story involving a football coach.

What I’m saying is that neither reporter won for traditional coverage of sports.

Check the record books. Prior to Branch, George Dohrmann of St. Paul Pioneer Press was the last individual sportwriter winner in 2000. He received the Pulitzer for his reports of fraud in the Minnesota basketball program. Ira Berkow shared the 2001 Pulitzer for national reporting for his article “The Minority Quarterback” in a New York Times series on race in America.

Since then, more than a decade, nothing. The Pulitzers bypassed Lance Williams and Mark Fainuru-Wada’s fine work on BALCO for the San Francisco Chronicle.

Actually, the Pulitzer snub goes back forever. Only three columnists: Red Smith (1976), Dave Anderson (1981), and Jim Murray (1990) have won the award for commentary. Zero for Grantland Rice and Jimmy Cannon, giants among giants. And the fact that Smith and Murray had to wait until they were so deep into their careers is absolutely absurd.

Now, it’s been 24 years since a sport columnist has claimed a Pulitzer. Meanwhile, a myriad of other columnists in other departments have enjoyed champagne celebrations in their newsrooms.

Back in 2012, I had Frank Deford speak for the profession. His words are worth repeating again.

In his book, Over Time: My Life as a Sportswriter, Deford details how the sportswriting fraternity repeatedly gets dumped on when it comes to major journalism awards. The Sports Illustrated legend writes in the book that he once asked NPR to nominate him for a Peabody Award for his weekly commentaries on sports.

NPR decided against it after a Peabody representative flat out said Deford wouldn’t win the award.

He writes:

But this is what stung: Peabody’s spokesman told Ellen (McDonnell, NPR’s executive director of news programming), “You should’ve nominated Daniel Schorr for politics.”

The late Mr. Schorr was the distinguished political commentator on NPR–as far as I was concerned, they could’ve given him a Peabody each and every year. But the idea that his work talking about politics merited recognition simply because of the subject matter, while mine disqualified me–well, yeah that upset me. I’m sorry, but every now and then I take umbrage.

Regarding the Pulitzers, Deford also takes umbrage with the committee giving an annual award to an editorial cartoonist.

Deford writes:

Hey, I love political cartoonists. But how many of them are there left? What? Two dozen? And how many newspaper sportswriters are there? Thousands. And for them, the Pulitzer people deign to give out one to a guy at the New York Times every generation or so.

Deford concludes his rant as only he can.

I’m sorry, I can’t apologize for pointing out what slights we in the profession so regularly receive. Sports journalism has been such a crucial economic part of the daily press that it ought to be recognized more, if only because it’s kept a lot of newspapers in business. And yeah, I know, it’s the toy shop. But some toys are very well made.

Exactly. Time for the Pulitzer committee to take a closer look at our toys. Even Jason’s.