Three hours, 51 minutes.

Three hours, 54 minutes.

That’s how long the American League and National League Wild Card games took to complete.

Both of them, nearly four hours.

The first inning of the Yankees-Twins game alone took 45 minutes to play.

And Major League Baseball is wondering why it is losing fans.

It’s not difficult to figure out why the pace of play makes a snail look like Usain Bolt.

I peeked in from time to time on both games and what I found was alarming.

During the American League game, I glanced in once to see Didi Gregorius at the plate with a 2-1 count.

I left the room, grabbed a drink, checked an email and returned to see what had happened.

Surely the next batter was at the plate.

Nope.

The count on Gregorius was 2-2.

Another time I checked in, Twins relief pitcher Alan Busenitz was standing on the rubber in the stretch, staring at Aaron Hicks for a full 20 seconds without moving.

Finally, Hicks stepped out of the box and the whole boring two-step began again.

I tried an experiment during the Diamondbacks-Rockies game.

During a couple at-bats, I put a stopwatch on the time between pitches.

The longest duration between offerings was 46 seconds. None were less than 25 seconds. The average was more than 30 seconds.

Who really wants to watch that? No one.

MLB has been harping on picking up the pace, especially after the average time of a game soared to 3 hours and 5 minutes this season.

But the players’ union has been hesitant to accept such measures. Baseball players are creatures of habit and, apparently, one of their biggest habits is taking their sweet ol’ time..

Now is the time for MLB to act and a “pitch clock” seems to be a reasonable step.

One was used as an experiment in Triple-A and Double-A. Pitchers had 20 seconds to make a pitch or a ball would be assessed. Hitters who stepped out of the batter’s box with fewer than five seconds on the clock were also punished with a strike.

What happened?

Games concluded 12 minutes sooner than those played without the clock.

There’s no reason why that rule wouldn’t work at the major league level.

MLB has also toyed with the idea of limiting the number of times a catcher can make a mound visit.

This would also be a positive move. Catcher’s these days wear out the grass between the plate and the mound with the frequency of their visits.

Limit it to one or two per inning. That is more than fair.

Baseball has to do something to hold on to its fans. It’s a great game. It’s been a great game for a century. It can be even better if the pace is picked up.

Mike Kilroy is a staff writer for the Butler Eagle.