There's no clock in baseball. Baseball games end when they're good and ready. In the NBA, most games are going to have 48 minutes of action. Some will have 53, 58, or any solution for y to the equation y = 48 + 5x where x is a non-negative integer (the greatest value for x in NBA history was 6, I know, you were told there'd be no math). Football and hockey games have 60 minutes of action unless there's overtime. I love that a baseball game doesn't depend on a clock. A baseball game has nine innings, each inning with two halves, and each half inning has three outs. Excluding games that are called due to rain once the game has become official (after four and a half innings), a game might last eight and a half innings, it might last nine innings, or it might last 19 innings.
The game last night between the Angels and A's went until 1:41 in the morning on the west coast. That's 49 minutes before I woke up this morning. If the Dodgers had been involved, I probably would have fallen asleep around 2:00 Eastern. But if it was a big game at the end of the season, I probably would have stayed up for the whole thing and then slept for like an hour.
I remember the Mets and Cardinals playing 20 innings three years ago. The good thing about that game was that it was on a Saturday. I definitely didn't watch that whole game, but I probably watched at least the last five innings. The Mets used 24 of their 25 players. Mike Pelfrey (normally a starting pitcher) got the save. National League games are much more fun because you get double switching and you can end up with the pitcher's spot in the order at a very random spot. When you get a game like that, you just have to figure out who can do what for your team until the game is ready to end. You might end up with guys playing positions they aren't used to playing and position players pitching.
I've said that Bud Selig has been mostly good for baseball. The worst thing that he did as commissioner was not get a grip on the steroid problem in baseball earlier than he did. The second worst thing he did was ending the 2002 All Star Game in a tie because the teams were out of players (besides Ryan Braun being a cheater, that's the other thing I thought about when I went to Miller Park). You know what happens in baseball if the teams are out of players? They keep playing until somebody wins. Baseball games take care of themselves. They don't need Bud Selig or a clock to tell them when the game is over.
There's something to not caring about the clock. My whole life revolves around the clock. I get up at 5:30 during the week. My school day starts at 8:00 and goes until 3:00ish. I schedule my evenings and weekends around the start times of sporting events. But this summer, I don't care what the clock says. I'm looking forward to not caring about what time it is (other than the start time of baseball games). It will be nice to not have to care about the time for two months. And that's the way baseball always is.
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