 You will often hear baseball called the sport with no clock or certainly it is one of those few sports that does not use time to govern how long it lasts but there is at least one mention of timing in the rule book and that rule is that a pitcher with nobody on base a pitcher has 12 seconds to deliver his pitch and so one of the things about this rule then is that the rule also has a paragraph that states its intent so the intent of the rule is to avoid unnecessary delays and so this is not so much trying to decrease the length of the game as it is it doesn't want a pitcher to maybe stall maybe his team is losing and he's trying to stall for a rain delay if he sees some clouds rolling in or something like that so very rarely will you actually see an umpire pull out a stop watch and start to time a pitcher but but he is in his rights to do so if he thinks a pitcher usually has consistently done this usually won't call him out just because of one pitch but but if he does because we have nobody on base this wouldn't be considered a bach so so if the rule is broken the umpire shall call a ball and that would be the penalty then enforced and this is from the time that the pitches delivered once it has left the pitcher's hand so those are the the one of the few times you'll see time referred to in the rule book