Oct 4, 2023 By Chris Dugan sports Editor dugan@observer-Reporter.Com 4 min read

Sports and clocks go together like peanut butter and jelly or salt and pepper.

Sports depend on clocks to determine the remaining time in football and basketball games, rounds in combat sports and speed in motor sports and running events. You’re always trying to beat the clock or it’s in your favor. Time is either on your side or working against you. You’re either milking the clock and trying to stop the clock.

Perhaps one reason I like baseball is it never consults a clock. The game is never over, no matter what the score is, until the final out is made.

Oh, wait, they put a clock in baseball this year. And it helped.

The clock can be an athlete’s best friend or its enemy.

It’s the same thing for anybody in the newspaper business. The clock is always there, ticking off time until the next deadline. That’s never good news for sportswriters, who are in a constant battle against the clock because of late game times, extra innings, overtime or closed locker room doors.

Because of recent developments concerning the Observer-Reporter’s printing and delivery operations, we have been forced to adjust our nightly deadlines for news and sports. They have been moved up 30 minutes and the new schedule started this week.

This earlier deadline will impact the timing of what appears in the printed edition each morning. Some sports results might not appear until a day later, but we will work to get them all in.

If a game isn’t over and reported to the O-R by roughly 9:30 p.m., then it’s unlikely to make it in the print edition because of our earlier deadline. Although those late-ending games might not make the newspaper, there will be up-to-date scores and stories about those games on our website at www.observer-reporter.com.

Our copy editors and page designers must have everything ready to print at 10 p.m. That means all content must be written and in front of them by 9:30 p.m. For sports, particularly soccer and football, this poses a problem. For example, two weekends ago, Belle Vernon played a football game against Thomas Jefferson that did not end until after 10:20 p.m. It was a high school football game that was pushing 3½ hours in length.

Essentially, if a game goes longer than two hours and isn’t reported to the O-R in a timely manner, then it probably won’t get in the paper.

You don’t have to tell me how unfortunate this is. I understand how important sports are to athletes, their parents and coaches and the diehard sports fan.

• The WPIAL Hall of Fame has been around since 2007. Can somebody explain why Ringgold’s Joe Montana and Waynesburg’s Bill George have not yet been inducted?

Both are in the Pro Football Hall of Fame. And both were more than just football players. Montana was a key player on several highly successful Ringgold basketball teams. And George was a state wrestling champion.

• Guess which team had the most pitcher violations of MLB’s pitch clock rules this year? Yes, the Pirates led the way with 41 violations, four more than the New York Yankees.

The New York Mets led in combined pitcher and batter violations with 57.

• Has anybody in Washington or Greene counties, or the entire WPIAL, coached more high school events than Jefferson-Morgan’s John Curtis?
• The Pirates’ Ke’Bryan Hayes took to social media after a game last month to take a shot at an umpire who called a pitch that was high and off the plate a strike during one of his at-bats. I’m still waiting for the social media post from Hayes about the times he had a pitch that was in the strike zone called a ball. Such calls happen a few times over the course of 162 games.