Pat Gillick reminisced the other day about an amateur baseball tournament in Kansas, in which games were started from morning until midnight, the schedule pushed along by the clock. If the hitter wasn't in the box 90 seconds from the last pitch of an inning to the first pitch of the next half-inning, well, everybody understood a strike would be called.

There was a lot of baseball to be played in a confined time frame, and the coaches and players understood that the pace needed to be pushed for the sake of the event. "Unless they got inclement weather," Gillick recalled, "they'd get off eight, 10 games in a day," with the games averaging two hours to perhaps two hours and 15 minutes.

Game times like that almost never occur anymore in professional baseball, but in the independent Atlantic League, rule changes will go into effect Aug. 1 that will push the pace and move the game along faster. Gillick, who was elected into the National Baseball Hall of Fame by the Veterans Committee in 2011, is part of a committee that agreed on these measures. Among them:

• The defensive team will be limited to three "timeouts" per game, in which mound visits or on-field conferences take place with the current pitcher. Pitching changes will not be counted as timeouts, and in the case of extra innings, one additional timeout will be permitted at the start of the 10th inning and every three innings thereafter. Umpires will enforce a strict 45-second time limit on said timeouts. If the umpire's warning is disregarded by the defensive team and play continues to be delayed, the umpire shall declare a "ball" for the batter at the plate.