Alex Cora just delivered some brutal honesty to any old-fashioned baseball fans who think the pitch clock is ruining their favorite game.

Time for you to get with the rest of us in the 21st century.

It’s a great thing, time. It’s the most valuable thing we have. It’s finite and will run out on us at some point. So we don’t have our whole lives, or even all night, to wait for baseball games to get over-with. Other sports – most other activities, really – have been timed in some fashion for decades now, so baseball is finally joining in. And Cora is a big fan of the pitch clock, for the same reason that most fans with families and lives are enjoying it.

“It’s been great. I love it, to be honest,” Cora said. “I want to be home sooner rather than later, and I think it’s a better product for the fans.”

• Alex Cora on new pitch clock: "The pace has been amazing... no doubt about it that this is the right thing" pic.twitter.com/w3h33COImk

  — NBC Sports Boston (@NBCSBoston) February 27, 2023

• Cora went on to explain that his kids currently play three different sports – baseball, soccer, and gymnastics – and baseball is a distant third, because the other two are more exciting for them. Are you listening yet, baseball farts? Your sport has become less exciting than soccer. Can’t imagine many Americans would have an easy time swallowing that reality. But that’s where baseball was at, prior to the pitch clock.

  “There’s sports out there that they’re more fun because there’s no dead time,” Cora said. “When [my kids] go to soccer practice, it’s non-stop. When they go to gymnastics, imagine, they’re jumping around all over the place and doing all that stuff. And then when you go to baseball practice, it’s hitting, it’s fielding, but there’s a lot of that dead time, and I think that’s what we’re trying to avoid.”

  “The pace has been amazing. Obviously there’s a few things we still have to work on … but for the game, for where we want to go? No doubt about it, this is the right thing.”

• 

  Mar 9, 2019; Fort Myers, FL, USA; A general view of the pitch clock in use during the fifth inning of the spring training game between the Boston Red Sox and the New York Mets at JetBlue Park. Mandatory Credit: Jasen Vinlove-USA TODAY Sports

• It’s refreshing to hear a baseball lifer talk about his own game this way. Cora very easily could have taken the typical selfish, entitled baseball-y position and stamped his feet over it. Have to imagine there will be some of it from the players.

  But it was also refreshing to hear new Red Sox closer Kenley Jansen accept the pitch clock as his new reality, rather than complain that he can’t do his usual routine and he’s being persecuted or whatever the standard baseball player reaction would be.

  Hopefully, the pitch clock is here to stay. I would also hope that the pitch clock is not going to end games too often. But I have to admit that was hilarious. And it’s great to finally see baseball games move along at the pace we’re used to seeing in the other major sports.

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  Matt Dolloff is a writer and podcaster for 985TheSportsHub.com. Any opinions expressed do not necessarily reflect those of 98.5 The Sports Hub, Beasley Media Group, or any subsidiaries. Have a news tip, question, or comment for Matt? Yell at him on Twitter @mattdolloff and follow him on Instagram @realmattdolloff. Check out all of Matt’s content here.

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