In response to my column of March 17, a couple of readers have come in with suggestions on how to pick up the notoriously slow pace of Japanese baseball games. From the Bay Area, fan Mike Colegate sent the following e-mail.

I know that during (my) last year's (group) trip (to Japan) there were several people commenting on how long the games took. I do have two suggestions as far as speeding up games:

First, if a player has to leave the field due to injury, and can't return within five minutes, said player must be replaced. My opinion is if the player needs to leave the field for longer than five minutes, he has a higher risk of getting a more serious injury should he return.