I AM, however, ambivalent about hard time limits for certain activity. I'm all for efforts to shorten what often seem like interminable games.
But baseball tempo is like rubato in classical music. There are certain points in the drama of baseball where a slower tempo is not only appropriate but desirable. It emphatically enhances the drama, saying, "This is the critical at bat, this is the critical pitch on which the game turns."
By all means routine events need to maintain a more expeditious pace. But having to hurry through dramatic moments will only inhibit the drama, perhaps even destroy it. Can you imagine a hurried wedding ceremony? "Dearly beloved, these two wanna get married, I pronounce them man and wife, you may all leave now." It's absurd. The moment requires a slowing down of the pace that, say isn't needed when you run through the McDonald's drive-through.
Baseball defies such restrictions, and it is part of the beauty of the game, NOT because the game insists on being boring, but because it has it's own unique dramatic ebbs and flows. The only solution I can see to needless interminable delays (batters routinely and repeatedly stepping out of the box just because they can) is a system where the umpires can give warnings and then penalize teams for such behavior (perhaps an automatic strike for a batter, an automatic ball out when a pitcher is just dragging out the pace of the game). I hate to put such things in the hands of umpires, I really do, but these kinds of things require human judgement.