Each October for the past several years, when I prepare to fork over too much money to stream every single San Antonio Spurs game, it has been with an eye to the past.

I rationalize the expense: Gregg Popovich is the greatest basketball coach of all time; over the course of 27 years leading the Spurs, he has won five championships and more than 1,300 games, and given San Antonians a lifetime of memories. And although in the past few seasons the Spurs have won … less, to put it mildly, they’ve played with the same passion and reverence for the game of basketball that Pop demands. There’s no way I can stop supporting him and the team just because they are in a slump. When Keldon Johnson dives for a loose ball in a meaningless-but-close game in April of a 20-win season, I think of the way Manu Ginóbili used to throw his body around for the team and smile. Or, when Sandro Mamukelashvili comes out of nowhere to steal the show against the two-time NBA MVP Nikola Jokić in a surprise March win, I’m reminded of leaping out of my seat in the Alamodome, cheering for another gritty Malik Rose performance.

I hold on to the hope that with Pop still in control, things might turn around. He might still be able to squeeze a bit of greatness out of players who don’t know how good they could be. Luckily for the franchise, there’s reason to believe that a player is on the way who has the chance to be an all-timer.

[Prashant Rao: Why it’s good that Americans don’t dominate basketball]

Last month, the Spurs won the first pick in the NBA-draft lottery—where teams who missed the playoffs find out the year’s draft order; the worse your team was, the better odds you have of getting an early pick. If all goes as expected tonight, they will select Victor Wembanyama, the 19-year-old French generational prospect who, at 7 foot 2, has the frame of a center with the ball-handling ability and finesse of a guard. NBA scouts have salivated over “Wemby” for years, calling him the best prospect since LeBron James (no pressure), and soon, he will likely call San Antonio home.

“The Spurs are part of the lifeblood of the city, and almost instantaneously you saw the mood shift and the hopes of the city just shoot through the roof,” San Antonio Mayor Ron Nirenberg, who watched the draft lottery in his car, told me. “The Spurs have been through some tough times over the last several years, and fortune seems to have shifted in an instant.” If you need a gauge for the excitement in the city, roughly 3,000 fans made deposits for season tickets in the two days after the lottery, and the first three rows of courtside seats sold out, as did the suites. One NBA scout estimated that Wembanyama could add $500 million to the value of the franchise thanks to his name recognition, international celebrity, and talent. And Spurs fans know what a No. 1 pick means for the city—we’ve seen it before.

On May 18, 1997, the day of that year’s lottery, the Spurs had just come off a surprisingly terrible season. David Robinson, the star big man whom they had taken with the No. 1 draft pick a decade prior, had been sidelined the entire year with a back injury. With Robinson, the Spurs had been a 60-win playoff team over the previous two seasons; without him, they struggled to cobble together 20 victories all year. But that night, the Spurs were putting the season behind them, because their struggles meant they were again well positioned to land the first pick.

That year’s drawing was the Tim Duncan sweepstakes. Duncan, who’d shone as a power forward at Wake Forest University, snagging rebounds in games like he was the only man on the court, was no doubt going to be selected first. The Spurs didn’t have the best odds of getting the first choice—that honor went to the Boston Celtics, who’d lost 34 of their final 38 games of the season—but they had hope. And as the lottery went along, that hope turned into belief. “I was nervous,” Spurs chair Peter Holt told reporters at the time. “But when we started getting down to 3-2-1, I got excited.” When the envelope was opened—revealing the fiesta-colored Spurs logo—Holt could do nothing but pump his fists.

On June 25, a little over a month later, during the draft itself, the Spurs made their selection official. Two first-overall picks—Duncan and Robinson—would be teaming up, and the league was terrified. As Stu Jackson, then general manager of the Vancouver Grizzlies, put it at the time: “I don’t mind getting the fourth pick … What I mind is having to face Robinson and Duncan in the West four times next season.”

I turned 6 the next day; Duncan became the birthday gift that kept on giving.

Two seasons after the Spurs selected Duncan, their luck began to pay off.

It’s Memorial Day, May 31, 1999, and the Spurs are in the Western Conference finals—one series away from the big dance. There are 12 seconds left in the fourth quarter. The Spurs, down 18 points in the third, have clawed their way back to within two. Sean Elliott, the Spurs forward, doesn’t so much as pirouette as look like someone just bumped into his shoulder on the street. His pinkie toe is practically hugging the sideline as he catches the ball. Somehow—divine intervention, maybe—Elliott composes himself with a hop and one dribble while orienting his body toward the hoop. His heels hang out-of-bounds, the balls of his feet planted firmly inside the line. Rasheed Wallace, the Portland Trail Blazers power forward, uses every bit of his 7-foot-4-inch wingspan to try to get a hand on the ball. It is no use. Elliott’s eyes lock on to what he can see of the rim as he rises with the picturesque form of basketball-shooting manuals.

“He fires the three,” Bob Costas, the NBC announcer, says. “And he hits it!” The Alamodome erupts—logically, some Trail Blazers fans must be there, but it seems like all 35,000 people in the arena have joined in an ebullient chorus. About 20 miles away, at our home on Randolph Air Force Base, my living room erupts in screams as well.

Some say that shot set the Spurs dynasty in motion. Neither Robinson nor Duncan took it, but it showed that this team was going to fight until the end for a victory, that the basketball gods were smiling on San Antonio. The win led the Spurs to sweep the Trail Blazers and catapulted them into the NBA Finals.

[From the January/February 2019 issue: Tibet is going crazy for hoops]

It’s nearly a month later—June 25, the fifth game of the Finals—and the Spurs are leading the series 3–1—one victory away from winning the whole thing. My family is huddled around the television. There are 2.1 seconds left on the clock. The New York Knicks guard Charlie Ward is trying to inbound the ball at half-court; the Spurs guard Avery Johnson—the “Little General”—is jumping around in front of him. Ward lobs the ball to Latrell Sprewell, who is immediately met by Duncan and Robinson. They don’t swat at the ball, just hold their arms erect—the “Twin Towers,” they called them—and make Sprewell’s shot near-impossible. He barely gets it over them; it’s an air ball straight into the hands of Elliott, who slams the ball into the ground as the buzzer sounds. Duncan, who averaged 27 points and 14 rebounds in the series, is named Finals MVP.

We put our Spurs flags on our Ford Windstar and drive downtown. It’s mayhem. Horns blare. My dad rolls down the windows and we join in the celebration.

I wake up the next morning as an 8-year-old. What a gift.

The finals never came that close to my birthday again, but each June that the Spurs hoisted the Larry O’Brien Championship trophy—1999, 2003, 2005, 2007, and 2014—was a gift to the city of San Antonio. The Spurs became a model of consistency, and even as the roster changed, the core held—Tim, David, Avery, and Sean became Tim, Tony, and Manu, which became Tim, Tony, Manu, and Kawhi—and Pop remained their leader. Even when the Spurs did not win, or (sigh) even make, the Finals, they won a lot. For 18 consecutive seasons, from 1999 to 2017, the Spurs won at least 50 games.

No one expects Wemby to come in and return the franchise to its status as a perennial finals contender overnight. (Okay, maybe some people do, and he might, but that’s beside the point.) What Wembanyama will bring back to San Antonio—what we pray he’ll bring back—is a foundation to build on. “It’s almost as if the success of the Spurs is the cool wind that comes in for the spring,” Nirenberg told me. “When we’ve been through the losing seasons over the last several years, it’s almost been in anticipation of when the ice would thaw; and when you see that pick come in … it’s just, it’s just like everything starts to bloom again. That’s really the outlook.”

Basketball fans everywhere—regardless of whom they support—should be glad that this potentially generational player isn’t going to be thrown into a team that’s expected to win right away. No one else in the NBA has the sort of job security that Gregg Popovich does—a security that allows him to let players develop instead of overworking them early. Wemby will be mentored by two of the best big men—in Duncan and Robinson—to ever play the game; both first-overall picks who know the pressure that comes with that designation.

Two decades from now, I hope I’ll be writing about how June 22, 2023, four days before my 32nd birthday, was the day that the dynasty was renewed. And even if that’s not meant to be, I’m going to fork over my money and enjoy the ride with a team that’s given me and my hometown so much.

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Are we moving too fast for America’s national pastime? Hanna Rosin asks staff writer Mark Leibovich whether the changes MLB is making to the game could help him fall in love with baseball all over again.

Interested in the changes baseball’s making? Read Mark’s article on how Moneyball broke baseball — and how the same people who broke it are back, trying to save it.

This transcript has been lightly edited for length and clarity.

Hanna Rosin: Okay, first question: Can you just list for me some rituals that baseball players do?

Mark Leibovich: Um, you know, spitting into their hands and rubbing their hands together, staring into space, slapping their chest, Velcro-ing and un-Velcro-ing their batting gloves, tipping their hat, balancing their hat, looking to the right field grandstand, looking to the left field grandstand, crossing themselves.

They invent new ones all the time. It’s completely dynamic. A pitcher might tug at his cap and wiggle his leg when going into a motion.

Rosin: Do people lick their bats?

Leibovich: Apparently Yasiel Puig does.

Rosin: Eww.

Leibovich: Yeah. But no, I think that’s a pretty rare thing. And sounds unsanitary too.

Rosin: And what do these rituals have to do with baseball?

Leibovich: Nothing, except that they have been there forever—and players have always had rituals. Oh, this is a big part of the problem in baseball. This is why the people in charge have moved to make it faster.

Rosin: That is my friend Mark Leibovich, a staff writer at The Atlantic who gets all the best assignments.

I’m Hanna Rosin, and this is Radio Atlantic.

Leibovich: See, if you had known me 30, 25 years ago, you would’ve totally seen me be into a baseball game. But baseball just left me.

Rosin: I’ve known Mark for enough years to see all the fan gear faded. Red Sox hat, Red Sox T-shirts with holes in them. Red Sox socks. I’ve even seen a picture of little Mark at the game with his dad.

Leibovich: Oh my God. The first spring-training game—like, my friends and I would rush home from school to listen to the game on the radio.

Rosin: His love of this game…it was deep.

Leibovich: Every year, my birthday party was all my friends coming, and we would play a game of pickup baseball at the intersection near the little cul-de-sac I grew up on.

But it’s not necessarily like little 7-year-old Mark here. Mean, if you had seen me, I guess I would’ve been in my late 30s. They had these scintillating couple of playoff series where the Red Sox finally came back. I mean, you know, those are some intense sports-watching things.

I mean, this was the culture of my youth, and that is just gone.

Rosin: And is it gone? Because life is just so fast now.

Leibovich: I think that’s part of it. I think baseball has gotten much slower. I mean, games literally took, you know, two and a half hours when I was a kid. Now, you know, as of last year they took three hours, 10 minutes or so.

Rosin: So it’s the two things moving in opposite directions. It’s like: Just as we were speeding up and getting faster, baseball just got slower.

Leibovich: You have these two things moving in opposite directions—baseball getting slower, and our brains getting faster and our attention spans shrinking.

And all of this was moving in a direction antithetical to enjoying baseball.

Rosin: It’s funny;. when you put it that starkly, it actually makes me a little sad. Like we just have no room for anything slow in our busy lives anymore.

Leibovich: Yes. I mean, it’s funny ’cause we have these conversations, and it’s like, “Oh, baseball is to blame. It’s these self-indulgent ritual-doers who are Velcro-ing and un-Velcro-ing their batting gloves all day.” Maybe this is just our problem. I mean, there are a lot of slow, reflective things we don’t do anymore.

Rosin: So, Mark: When you set out to write about baseball, you thought that the sport was dying. And then, it did something to save itself...maybe. What did baseball do?

Leibovich: They have initiated a set of rules [in Major League Baseball]. One, and most importantly, to make the game go faster. And two: certain rules to make there be more action and offense. Less waiting around in baseball; more fun to watch.

Rosin: Got it. So just like: faster everything. More exciting.

Rosin: What’s one thing they did?

Leibovich: Well, the big thing is a pitch clock.

A pitch clock is a new tool that has appeared in every major-league ballpark this year. In which there’s this big clock in the outfield and also behind home plate—

Rosin: —like a literal clock.

Leibovich: A literal clock. It counts down from 15 seconds.

A pitcher now has 15 seconds to pitch the ball, or 20 seconds if there’s someone on base. And the batter has to be in the box ready to hit by the eight-second mark. So there are only eight seconds left. The batter has to be ready.

Rosin: And what else did they do?

__

Bigger bases

Leibovich: One of the things they did was they made the bases bigger, which, you know, people can understand. It’s a bigger base now. What that does is it encourages stolen bases. It makes running bases a safer thing, ’cause you have more of a safe haven to grab onto, or slide into.

They’re reducing pickoff throws, which took forever. And things like that. So they’re encouraging more offense.

Rosin: This isn’t technical baseball language, but it does feel like a real vibe shift.

Leibovich: It very much is. And it’s hard to explain, but when you’re actually watching a game, there is urgency.

Urgency: It is not a word that anyone would ever associate with baseball in recent years.

Now, you sit and you watch—and people are not screwing around. And you sort of internalize that as a viewer or a listener, and you say, “Wait a minute; things are happening faster. I better pay closer attention. I better not check my phone as closely.”

And so the whole vibe is, yes, maybe less relaxing. But ultimately more satisfying, because more is happening, and it’s happening faster.

Rosin: And why did they make all these changes?

Leibovich: Well, part of it is just: Baseball was falling further and further behind things like football and basketball and other sports that are a lot more compelling.

They go much faster and, frankly, are more national spectacles. Like everyone gathers to watch the Super Bowl.

So I actually went to a World Series game last fall between the Phillies and the Astros. And I drove up to Philadelphia. And, you know, it was a World Series game, and it was a no-hitter. The Astros pitchers—four of them—combined to no-hit the Phillies. This was historic, or theoretically it was historic.

No one really noticed. No one remembers it. And this is a World Series game—the likes of which are routinely being outrated on TV by early-season NFL games.

I mean, as our culture speeds up, as brains speed up—you know, cell phones and computers and attention spans. Just the whole culture has sped up. Baseball has slowed down.

And finally, they sort of decided to, all at once, just get very tough and say, “Okay, there is now a clock in baseball.” Lo and behold, it has already shaved 25, maybe 30 minutes off of games in the first couple of months in this season.

__

Theo Epstein

Rosin: So. Who is the main architect of speeding baseball up?

Leibovich: There are a few of them. But probably the best known is a guy named Theo Epstein, who is this legendary figure in baseball.

He was the youngest general manager in history. He was named general manager of the Boston Red Sox at age 28. He is known for bringing the first World Series championship to Boston in 86 years. He then left the Red Sox and went to the Chicago Cubs—who had an even longer World Series drought—and he delivered after 108 years.

So he sort of has this legend attached to him. And he left the Cubs a couple of years ago, and he joined Major League Baseball as a consultant.

__

Moneyball

Rosin: Isn’t Theo Epstein associated with the whole “Moneyball revolution” in baseball?

Leibovich: Yes. He did not pioneer it. Billy Beane of the Oakland A’s is given credit for that. But Theo Epstein is known as the chief disciple who applied some of these new theories in baseball and actually won World Series with it for the Boston Red Sox and the Chicago Cubs.

Rosin: Tell me if this is right. This is what I understand about Moneyball. Okay. I read the book; I saw the movie. So Moneyball was a revolution that, as I recall, was supposed to modernize baseball. Like, instead of tracking one set of statistics about players, they tracked a different set of statistics about players. Which turned out to be the actual critical factors in winning a game, and allowed teams with fewer resources to beat rich, fancy teams.

But also what I understood about Moneyball was that it was supposed to have fixed baseball.

So didn’t we fix baseball?

Leibovich: You know, very interesting terminology here, and we’re gonna try to make it not complicated. It fixed baseball for teams trying to win baseball games—i.e., the Oakland A’s, right? Who have less resources and did more with less.

The innovations we’re seeing now? It’s not about winning baseball games. Because the commissioner of baseball [Rob Manfred] and now Theo Epstein, his consultant—they work for all of baseball. They work for the fans; they work for the interests of entertainment.

So it has nothing to do with a competitive advantage between the Oakland A’s and the New York Yankees. It has everything to do with the entertainment attention span of someone watching a Disney movie or playing a video game or watching the Super Bowl or something like that.

Rosin: Moneyball fixed one set of problems, but then created another set of problems.

Leibovich: Well, they created a blueprint for teams to do better with less resources—but it was a terrible thing to watch. I mean, it created more walks, more strikeouts, slower action. So yeah: I mean, it solved one problem. It created any number of problems if you are a consumer of entertainment.

__

Mental-Skills Coaching

Rosin: You know, I get why they need to move faster. One of the things that you wrote about from the slow era, which I really appreciate, was this mental-skills coaching. I was surprised and maybe happily surprised to learn that they teach baseball players how to meditate in real time while they’re on the field.

Leibovich: In a sense, yes. I mean, that’s been part of the 21st-century revolution in baseball, and in the service of giving baseball players and teams a slightly better competitive advantage. They have taught mental skills, imaging, little mini-meditations, visualizations, things that you do. Because sports, especially baseball, is a big mind game, right?

You need to put yourself in a very relaxed state, or a state that puts you in a good position to succeed.

Rosin: That seems so nice and enlightened, and that’s what we tell our children to do when they’re stressed out. That’s what we tell everyone. Like, we’re all supposed to slow down and meditate.

Leibovich: Yeah; it might be nice. But it also gets introduced into the culture, which by and large introduces more time and dawdling into the culture of baseball. So David Ortiz, Nomar Garciaparra, Robinson Canó: They have these rituals where they take their deep breaths, and they clap, and they sort of see the field.

And then the owner of the Seattle Mariners told me this: He was teaching his son’s Little League team, and all of a sudden half the Little League team is trying to imitate Robinson Canóby stepping out during the at-bat and doing his little ritual. And so: “Sorry, we gotta wait for Jimmy over here to do his little Robinson Canó–like ritual.”

And then John Stanton, the owner of the Mariners, said to me, “Look, we have just taught an entire generation of kids that it’s okay to pace around the mound for however long and waste all this time.”

And I guarantee you, it would be a lot more interesting to watch Johnny try to dunk like LeBron James or kick a soccer ball like Messi or something than it is Johnny from Seattle trying to imitate Robinson Canó between the 2-and-1 and 2-and-2 pitch.

And so, again, in a very crude way: The pitch clock sort of disrupts all of that all at once.

__

Juan Soto

Rosin: You know what: We haven’t talked about how the players feel about all of this.

Leibovich: Hmm.

Rosin: You talked to Padres star player Juan Soto about the pitch clock. Let’s listen to that.

Leibovich: Do you think the clock is a good thing? Like, did the times of the baseball games used to bother you? Or did you ever get impatient, sort of waiting for pitches to come and stuff, just watching a game when you’re playing in it?

Juan Soto: I feel like if you enjoy the games, you gotta give them time to think. And to see, look around and look at everything. I mean: I know for fans sometimes it gets boring. But for baseball players, they will never get bored.

Leibovich: So you were never bored at a baseball game.

Soto: No, never. Never. It’s never too long. It’s never too short. I’m just enjoying the game.

Rosin: What was your impression of what he was saying there?

Leibovich: He was saying like, “Look; this is my life. This is my job. This is what I love to do. I don’t care if you’re bored.” I mean, I’ve had many, many people I interviewed for this story say that a million different ways. Like: “I can’t worry about whether you’re entertained or not. You know, I’m gonna get fired if I lose this many games. Or if my batting average dips below  2.0, whatever.”

No one was saying, “Oh look—the ratings from last night’s game were higher than the night before. Oh, ticket sales are up around baseball. We are being more entertaining.” No one cares about that, huh? Nor should they.

Rosin: So, the players feel one way—and we, the fans, feel another. So I guess that’s why Padres star Manny Machado, in his very first pitch-clock game, was like, “No, thank you.”

After the break: Can Mark learn to love baseball again?

__

Rosin: You’ve been to a pitch-clock game.

Leibovich: The first pitch-clock game.

Rosin: Ooh!

Leibovich: Well, the first spring-training pitch-clock game.

Rosin: You were in a box, sitting with all these guys, right?

Leibovich: It wasn’t a box. It was actually a couple of rows up from the field in a spring-training game, with, basically, the orchestrators of this from Major League Baseball. One of them was Theo Epstein. Another guy was Morgan Sword, who is basically the director of on-field operations for Major League Baseball, who has been putting this all in place.

Rosin: And what were you guys talking about?

Leibovich: Well, mostly we were watching the game. I mean, this is like the first day of school for Morgan and Theo. This is this thing they had been envisioning and trying to put in place for months, and even years. And this was the first game in which it was actually happening

Rosin: And were they nervous, like on edge? What was the vibe?

Leibovich: Morgan was extremely nervous. He was a basket case, and usually he’s pretty chill. So yeah, that was pretty glaring.

Rosin: Why was he a basket case?

Leibovich: He was a basket case because he had been thinking about everything that could possibly go wrong. First of all, he’s being scrutinized. Everyone in baseball is watching to see how this first pitch-clock game is gonna go off. But he’s also spent so much time talking to umpires, talking to players, talking to managers, talking to game officials, talking to clock operators. You know, it’s basically starting up a whole cabinet department within baseball that didn’t exist before.

And so obviously on Day One, you’re gonna be nervous.

—

Leibovich: So what’s your experience as a fan been during this interregnum for you? What about your son?

Theo Epstein: Yeah. I mean, my son—my 15-year-old—I can’t help but notice his lack of desire to sit through a three-and-a-half-hour game, really.

Rosin: So who is that?

Leibovich: That was Theo Epstein. He was telling me about what his personal experience is as a baseball fan during this time when he is not affiliated with the team.

Rosin: And he’s saying his son is bored? Like, can’t watch baseball anymore?

Leibovich: Yeah.

Epstein: And especially during the pandemic, I noticed so much of his life existed through gaming. Interacting and doing commerce and everything else, like all through the computer. And Fortnite—it’s like a 10-, 15-minute game. Obviously, it’s a bit of a cliché that the Gen Z generation grew up on their phones.

Leibovich: Yeah. The patience. it’s not a cliché; it’s brain chemistry. It’s real. It is very real.

Rosin: So it’s not just about our attention span. I guess what he is panicking about is that he’s got these sons who should be baseball fans, but they can barely pay attention for more than 10 seconds.

So it makes you feel like the future of the sport is not—

Rosin: Yeah. So this is a multitiered problem, right? So not only are older former fans’ brains adapting to a faster life and moving away from baseball; there’s also this new generation that doesn’t even see what the fuss is about to begin with, and aren’t exactly reading Moneyball and reading George Will columns and watching Field of Dreams to see what the fuss is about.

Rosin: Yes. It’s actually pretty cool that you were present at the creation of new baseball—the new era of baseball.

Leibovich: I’m glad. I’m glad you appreciate this. Because this was a momentous day. And of course it was also a very mundane day, but yeah: It felt momentous.

Rosin: Right. The first-ever game in the new era of baseball. Like, was it more fun? Did you like it? Did time move faster?

Leibovich: So the game was very crisp. It was 3 to 2; I think Seattle won. Basically, all these executives, they were rooting not for the Mariners or the Padres. They were rooting for this game to be very, very fast. ’Cause they knew everyone was looking at this as like, Oh, this is the new baseball. We want it to work.

And yeah, it was very enjoyable.

I was very glad that the game took less than two hours and 30 minutes. I know Theo Epstein was; he wanted to go take a nap. The person to my right wanted to catch a flight back to New York or wherever he was going.

Rosin: So people were living their lives. I gotta catch a flight, I gotta do this, I gotta do that. And it fit into their busy lives.

Leibovich: Much more so.

Rosin: Hmm. I can’t really tell if you, Mark Leibovich, were into the game. Like, you know when you’re into a game.

Leibovich: Yeah.

Rosin: Like, I’ve seen you be into a football game.

Leibovich: Yeah. Have you ever seen me be into a baseball game?

Rosin: No.

Leibovich: See, if you had known me 30, 25 years ago, you would’ve totally seen me be into a baseball game. But baseball just left me.

Rosin: You used the word enjoyable? Enjoyable is like a dead word. Were you into the game? Personally, I prefer just fast games; I like watching basketball, I like watching soccer. I want to maybe get on board with faster baseball.

Leibovich: Yes.

Rosin: And so I guess I’m wondering where you are. Like, are you on board with faster baseball? Like when you were there, were you like, Ah, this is gonna work?

Leibovich: Yeah. I saw a minor-league game a few years ago that had a clock, and I was like, Yeah, this is it. This is totally it. I was watching an NBA playoff game with my wife and my daughter Nell, who said, “You know, there’s something really nice about a game that you know is gonna last two hours and 20 minutes.” There’s a clock on the NBA game. And if you’re a soccer fan, it’s gonna take two hours. The commissioner of baseball himself, Rob Manfred, said to me, “Look, what in your life do you really want to do for more than two and a half hours at a shot?” Even people sitting up in the front office, or the commissioner of baseball, would be like: Wow, do we really have to watch this for more than two and a half hours?

Rosin: Yeah. Like the people who are supposed to be…

Leibovich: Management, managers, commissioners. Things like that.

Rosin: I guess I just have to accept that this is where we are now.

Like, we are just not people who have patience for a three-hour pastime. We just don’t have it.

Leibovich: Right. But here’s the thing: Games literally did not take three hours in 1969. They took much less, like two and a half hours. Or probably less than that. I don’t know; maybe people then would have had less patience. But again, these two things are moving in opposite directions.

Rosin: Let’s say we shaved enough time off baseball that it lasted the same amount of time as it did when you were a kid.

Leibovich: Right.

Rosin: Do you think you could ever feel about baseball the same way you felt when you were a kid? Do you actually feel like you could feel the same way?

Leibovich: I mean, look: Can you feel the same way about something as a 50-something-year-old as you did when you were 7 or 8?

I mean, you have a much less mature brain when you’re a kid, for better or for worse. You see the world much more clearly, much more innocently. With much less sense of proportion, and so forth. So, I don’t know, and maybe my fandom growing up is shaped by nostalgia. Now that I think about it and talk about it, I would think so—because right now I associate it with good times for my youth.

Rosin: So it feels like where we are this summer is that we—the fans—really want baseball to change. The players are somewhat resistant. The rules are in place. Do you think that this will save baseball?

Leibovich: I think it will help baseball. I think early results are that it has helped baseball.

If you go by the actual shrinking time of games, if you go by the ratings and the ticket sales and so forth, the first few months of the season have been very encouraging. The larger point is, you know: Is this putting a Band-Aid on a larger sort of existential problem that baseball is ultimately not going to be able to deal with?

Rosin: All right. So now that you’re done with your reporting, and there are no legends inviting you to sit in their boxes with them and talk to Juan Soto, are you gonna go to any games?

Leibovich: Yeah. I mean, again, a lot of it comes down to…

Rosin: Was that like “Yeah,” or was that like “Yes”?

Leibovich: Yes. And I’ll tell you what probably the decider will be. I mean, I’m parochial. I care about my team, the Red Sox. The Red Sox were not supposed to be good this year. They’re kind of mediocre, but they’re an entertaining team, and I have cared about them. So I have watched. If they completely implode, I’ll probably stop watching. So like Juan Soto and him wanting good numbers, I want my team to do well. And I will probably drop off. But if I do go to a game this year, I’m thrilled that it’s not gonna go past 11 o’clock.

Rosin: Right. So it’s love, but it’s conditional love.

Leibovich: Totally.

Rosin: Like, they’ve won you back, but conditionally.

Leibovich: Hundred percent.

Rosin: I think where I’m at is: I still would rather see a Washington Spirit game. But if somebody, say a child—anybody’s child—asks me to go to a game, I won’t recoil in horror. I’ll be like, “Yeah, okay, sure. I’ll try it.”

Leibovich: Here’s what I’ll say to you. And it’s very intimate. But I’m gonna invite you to a game. We both live in Washington, and so we’re gonna go. And whoever wants to join us can join us. And hopefully, the recoiling in horror will not transpire. And if it does, we can just leave.

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Rosin: This episode of Radio Atlantic was produced by A.C. Valdez. It was edited by Claudine Ebeid. Our engineer is Rob Smierciak. Our fact-checker is Michelle Ciarrocca. Thank you also to managing editor Andrea Valdez. Our podcast team includes Jocelyn Frank, Becca Rashid, Ethan Brooks, Kevin Townsend, Theo Balcomb, and Vann Newkirk. I’m Hanna Rosin, and we’ll be back with a new episode every Thursday.

If you like it, tell some Red Sox fans or some Yankees fans; whatever. Tell all the fans.