Once upon a time existed a game where men hit a stitched leather ball with polished lumber and ran across dirt and grass like children free to play in the sunshine. This game was played across America and became the pastime of a nation; Baseball. With the World Baseball Classic quickly approaching it seems appropriate for a thought on the state of the game and why it has fallen out of favor in many parts of America.
When I was child growing up in Upstate New York and the mid-Atlantic, I had a Louisville Slugger, several gloves and a New York Yankees jersey that I wore proudly as an Easter Sunday suit and tie. I heard stories of Baseball greats, including my Uncle Ted, who would eventually be voted into the Western New York Baseball Hall of Fame. And I was far from unique. My friends in the neighborhood, black, white and Hispanic all owned the necessities to get a game on. Between quadruple-headers we’d trade baseball cards, “I’ll give you a Bill Matlock, Dave Parker and ‘Pops’ Stargell for “Yaz.” It wasn’t long before a fresh stick of gum thrown in would close the deal. It was kids’ business and in the summer months, a daily occurrence. On any empty field one could find boys and the odd young lady out pitching and catching nine innings. So how did a game that had once operated on the status quo of institutionalized racism, then transformed into a catalyst of social change through Branch Rickey and Mr. Jackie Robinson, fall into a state of irrelevance in the American social conscience? Arrogance.
Baseball’s highest officials ceased working to attract new fans in an era of infinite sporting options and a fast food pop culture that holds history in slight regard. Many corporations have learned that lesson and have taken to marketing and positioning themselves into the social fabric of America. This is why the MTV’s and PlayStation’s of the world have usurped baseball for entertainment value cache with young America. This is why the National Football League has taken over the television ratings as the most popular sport amongst sports viewers and the Super Bowl has bumped the World Series down to third world status. Baseball has a puritanical fan base and die hard lighthouse keepers in George Will, Thomas Boswell, Peter Gammons’ and others who maintain the history of the game. But history doesn’t exist in the future and for baseball to flourish it must find new fans, new first love’s. Basketball and Football jerseys have been commandeered by Hip Hop nation a wardrobe choice saluting the historical past and respected present of those athletes. Rarely does one see a baseball jersey in the inner city or suburbs, and ever more rare is the sight of children filling sandlots with baseball games. Those lots have become empty shrines to what was and a nod that PlayStation, X-Box and other video game systems have taken “outside” from our youth. This is another burgeoning problem for America, but one symptomatic of a problem baseball seems to hide from. If a child is playing a video game, specifically a sports based video game, it seven out of ten times in Madden NFL or NBA Live.
Ratings for Major League Baseball’s fall showcase, The World Series, are half of what they were twenty years ago and have been on the decline for the past five years. Nascar’s claim of being the second most watched sport of American sports viewers goes to show how far baseball has fallen. Major League Executive Vice President of Business, Tim Brosnan argued that baseball, indeed, was the second most watched sport after football. This argument would have been preposterous as little as fifteen years ago. It’s a sad indicator of baseball’s current circumstance that its highest ranking officials can be challenged by a sport such as NASCAR, that is clearly popular, but hardly athletically dynamic or cosmopolitan. Even more telling is that baseball is willing to engage in an argument as to what sport is number two. The national pastime in a debate over which sport is most popular behind football? That would have been unheard of at the time of my birth. There would have been no question as to baseball’s dominance. And only fans in New England seem to be able to maintain the singular passion for baseball that once belonged to the entire nation.
So what to do? Baseball must implement marketing campaigns that allow potential new customers to get to know its players. It can be argued that the always valuable 18-25 year old set would be hard pressed to name the ten best players on baseball diamonds today. Baseball’s only effective marketing campaign was not chosen, but put upon them by a media’s attempts to “out” players and toss them into the firestorm that the steroid scandal became. Baseball writers, fans and purists must exist less in the minutiae of statistics, averages, percentages and history and recognize that seasonal accounting and a rich past does not buy the sport a future. This seems lost on Commissioner Bud Selig who has been criticized over a myriad of public relations gaffes over the years.
Providing a vision of what baseball is and can still be will be Selig’s legacy or undoing if he fails to lead the sport back to it’s rightful prominence in the canon of athletics. As for now, the state of the game is rich in contracts, but poor in interest from those fans it needs most; new fans who are watching MTV and playing video games and cannot even name baseball’s top all-stars, let alone tell anyone what a perfect game is.
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