Ned Yost and the mysteries of time

Ned Yost tries some deep thinking.

The Twins had the U.S.-Belgium World Cup game on the outfield video board Tuesday afternoon, and somebody asked Royals manager Ned Yost if he was following the giant global futbol tourney.

He came up with an answer so breathtakingly inane as to call into question his capacity for logic.

#Royals manager Ned Yost refuses to watch soccer because "the game's too long." Of all possible complaints, this is probably least popular.
— Alex M. Smith (@asmiff) July 1, 2014

"The game's too long." This of World Cup soccer — a game whose regulation length is 90 minutes of running time — from a major league manager whose team seldom completes a regulation game in less than 180 minutes. Seriously.

There is no requirement that Ned Yost care about soccer, of course. But nobody connected to major league baseball — or any other big-time American sport, for that matter — has any right to claim soccer games take too long.

Big-time American sports are all about finding, even creating, interruptions in the contest and exploiting them to sell stuff on the broadcasts. The gap in baseball between innings has been stretched to the breaking point, particularly on nationally televised games. Football invented a superficial automatic timeout for ads, the "two-minute warning." (What, the coaches are so absent-minded they don't know how much time is left?)  The last "two minutes" of basketball games can take a half-hour to complete in the hands of expert coaches.

Ned Yost thinks soccer games take too long? All the glass in his house deserves to be stoned.