Ortiz fumes, as time is now of the incense

OAKLAND, Calif. - Bud Selig and David Ortiz just have to agree to disagree.

Selig believes the pace of games needs to be crisper. Ortiz feels recent attempts by Major League Baseball to quicken the pace will ruin the sport.

We've all sighed and cursed about hitters who keep stepping out of the box or go through endless rituals (hello, Nomar Garciaparra). But the players feel those are few and far between.

"There's so much stuff involved in this game," said Ortiz before the Red Sox played the A's last night. "When you have a payroll of $180 million, you're doing everything to win, right? So if I'm a team owner, I don't see the reason why, when I put a good team together, why the game has to be rushed. If I'm a team owner and you come to me with something like that . . . You know what? [Expletive]!"

Ortiz appears to be the most passionate member of the Sox clubhouse on this issue. He held back what he really wanted to say for fear umpires might come after him.

Terry Francona held a meeting with his players yesterday to go over the directives, which include limiting the number of times a hitter steps out, preventing batters from reapplying pine tar, keeping pitchers working at a brisk pace, and having relievers enter the game in an orderly fashion.

"I don't know what the idea is to all of this, but I don't think it's good for the game," said Ortiz. "The game doesn't need this. There's too much [expletive] going on . . . the steroid stuff . . . and all that bull. Now you want to add this? Do you know what it takes to figure out how to hit a baseball? That takes time. It's not just throw the ball and hit it. Hitting is not easy. Pitching is not easy.

"Every time when I'm hitting and I take a pitch, and I step out, I'm thinking about what I want to do with this pitcher. I think about what the guy is going to throw me, how I want to approach it, whether I want to stay inside out. Same thing with the pitcher - they're thinking, 'What should I throw here?' That's part of the game."

Sox hitting coach Dave Magadan was thrown out of the game Friday when umpire Tim Tschida refused to allow J.D. Drew to reapply pine tar to his bat. Magadan thought this was over the top, considering, as it was revealed later, Drew had actually broken the bat.

The crackdown came as no surprise because Major League Baseball had told teams via conference calls last Wednesday that the rules were going to be enforced over the weekend.

According to Mike Port, vice president of umpires, the umpires are just going to enforce what's already on the books. Port realizes that umpires have not stuck to the letter of the law, but at the owners' meetings last month, it was decided that there would be steps taken to quicken games.

"This isn't good," said Ortiz. "This guy can't even put pine tar on his bat. All of my bats have pine tar. I have to keep putting it on because it dries out. I just don't know what the idea of rushing the game is. They say the fans are losing interest in it? If we're kicking [expletive] or we're getting our [expletives] kicked, I think the fans are still watching our games."

Players don't understand why the games have to be quicker, pointing out that there's no clock in baseball. But Selig, and apparently the owners, believe there's a lot of time when there's no action whatsoever and this might be a reason the younger audience believes baseball is too slow.

Selig, in talking Friday with XM radio host Charley Steiner, said, "I watched the other day . . . I watched a player step out of the box. He hadn't swung, ball one, and he was readjusting his gloves. Now I was sitting at home and I thought to myself, 'Well, that's interesting. He hasn't swung. What could possibly have happened to the gloves?'

"It's the pace of the game, as I tell the clubs. And, by the way, they are very supportive of that."

Minor league baseball decided to enforce the rules two years ago, and the result has been a crisper pace. Port remembers back in 1992 when the rules were enforced while he ran the Arizona Fall League. He said the average game time was 2 hours 22 minutes, and that was with the designated hitter. The A's 3-0 win last night - well-pitched on both sides with neither Oakland's Justin Duchscherer (8 IP, 1 hit) nor Boston's Josh Beckett (7 IP, 7 hits) allowing a walk - last just 2:17.

In the old days, pitchers just pitched and hitters stayed closer to the plate. Selig realizes those days are over, but he's trying to make sure the downtime is limited. "Well, I understand that it's different, and I said that," he said. "But we had begun to reduce the time to 2:40, 2:38, 2:37. And now we're back up again and it is just not acceptable."

Asked whether umpires would check pitchers with stopwatches, he said, "We'll use whatever mechanisms we need. The rules are clear, anyway. If there's a 12- or 15-second rule, you bet that's what will be enforced. Sometimes there are 2-1 games that last 3 hours and 10 minutes. It's the pace of the game. We are working on a whole series of things.

"And I must say the cooperation from the clubs so far has been wonderful because it's in everybody's best interest."

Sox catcher Kevin Cash, who has witnessed the minor league hurry-up firsthand, didn't really notice the extremes. He also said that although pitchers benefit from a brisk pace, "If a guy throws four balls in a row, I want him stepping off the rubber and collecting his thoughts."

This is all going to get very interesting to the point where some of the arguments - and the ejections - may take longer to sort out than the rules.