Baseball: Is it time to rethink our “National Pastime”?

I love baseball. I love it in sepia toned photographs. I adore watching old men with names like Stan, Ted, Whitey, and Sparky, carry on about the old days in front of a soft focus lens that would make Diane Sawyer weep with delight. I love sabermetricians, Billy Beane, and Money Ball. I love hating Tim McCarver, Joe Buck, and Joe Morgan. I will argue best pitcher with you until we come to blows (Walter Johnson). My favorite player of all time is an obscure Cubs outfielder who held an important NL record longer than his much more famous AL counterparts (Yes, this constitutes your bonus question).

hack wilson
“I’d drink all you fools under the table.”

During a Red Sox rain out my sophomore year, NESN re-showed Game 6 of the 1975 World Series from start to finish; 15 college kids pounding beers and hanging on every pitch of a game 20 years in the past. We’ve all seen Fisk beg, demand, and pray that ball fair. Yet, every time I see it, just like VY 4th and 5, I start jumping around like Tom Cruise aggressively defending his heterosexuality.

I will watch a Washington Nationals game, with Rob Dibble doing analysis, from start to finish. This would give a flagellant pause. In short: I love baseball with the fervor that only somebody who tried desperately to succeed and failed spectacularly at the sport can devote. Also know as Bob Costas Syndrome.

So with some authority, I can say: Baseball’s future is about on par with the newspaper industry, although with some handy dandy public infrastructure investments, and a nifty anti-trust protection by Congress, it’ll probably limp along like Nicholas Cage’s career, turning out dreck that makes just enough money to be asked for a return appearance.

nic cage
“Bangkok Dangerous or Camden Yards?”

“NO,” you say? “What of record attendance? Records Broken? Retro-style ballparks?” Like a botoxed cougar, these artifices cover the creaking, aging infrastructure of a game from a long dead era, hanging on desperately to its youth, hoping to attract another young audience.

No, somebody needs to lower their expectations and market, and it’s largely due to the internet. Baseball is a sport of radio and newspaper. It survived in the era of T.V. because prior to the arrival of on-demand and 1000 channel satellite networks, your sports choices were limited. Like that cougar, she held her looks for a long time, and the patrons didn’t have access to other options. Additionally, newspapers marry exceptionally well to baseball, where wordsmiths like Shirley Povich can turn a phrase about the boys of summer, while all the previous day’s games are laid out in front of a reader across two pages in a box scores. Pour a cup of coffee, grab a bowl of corn flakes (or in Scip’s case, Organic Muesli grown by Swedish Virgins), and read about your team’s efforts, maybe look at the stats for a couple of local boys on other teams, check a few of your fantasy players, hit the morning showers. And for nearly a century, it’s been more-or-less that simple.

sports writer
“Scipio is a hack.”

That’s just not true anymore. Even I can’t be bothered reading the box scores online every day, because like everyone else, I cancelled my newspaper subscription years ago. It’s tedious and after I’m done with the Red Sox box, I’m certainly not going to check and see if that young guy who struck out three in an inning and third of relief on the Royals last week, pitched again. I get geeked for Monday morning football box scores. You read about 20 or so games, then I can do other things with my time until next Monday.

Bluntly, as an aesthetic, the game is dreadfully boring. I watched probably 50-60 games this summer, and I appreciate the finer nuances of the game: setting up a batter, skillful defense, clever managing, good bullpen management. I read Baseball Prospectus, Bill James, the Boston Globe, watch Baseball Tonight, and do fantasy. Yet, if Conan the Barbarian comes on AMC, there’s a 50/50 chance I’ll change the channel and throw away the remote.

conan
“What is the Riddle of the Infield Fly Rule?”

Football satisfies my, and the publics-at-large, ADHD addled brain. Short intense periods of violence that wrap themselves nicely into a 3 hour time block. It asks for my attention only once a week, and most importantly, television LOVES football. At best television tolerates baseball. You get to see the inner workings of the game, but the temptation to channel surf makes it appealing to see what else is out there. Like hockey, baseball’s charms are in person, and that makes it tough to draw the television viewers necessary to compete in a fast, global, and online marketplace. Fundamentally, we care about the statistics and numbers of baseball, but nobody actually wants to watch the games on television.

george will
“Even I don’t really like watching the games.”

In our next installment, we look at attendance and television share figures, and what they tell us about where baseball is going. Then we’ll wreck some perceptions about publicly financed stadiums, steroids, and other sundry issues.

Article Tags:

Billy Beane, Joe Buck, Joe Morgan, Major League Baseball, Media, MLB, Moneyball, National Pastime Series, Tim McCarver

38 Responses

Chooky said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 1:22 pm

“Like a botoxed cougar, these artifices cover the creaking, aging infrastructure of a game from a long dead era, hanging on desperately to its youth, hoping to attract another young audience.” I loved that sentence.

Conan fears magic but still knows that you could purposely drop the infield fly in order to get an easy double play.

You seemingly admitted to being a Red Sox fan, which would take courage, like announcing an admiration for scat fetish. You secretly want to see Dustin Pedroia in a loin cloth, don’t you? Say it aint so!

That was a great read. I look forward to the next installment.

I can still watch a baseball game, but I don’t hang on every pitch like I did when I was a kid.

I failed the bonus question. Off to the search I go.
scagnetti said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 1:26 pm

excellent.
as a Royals fan, I anticipate this conversation.
scagnetti said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 1:28 pm

Hack Wilson, I forgot
EyesOfTX said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 1:55 pm

Dang, Scagnetti beat me to it. Hack held the NL HR record of 56 for more than 60 years, until Mark McGwire’s steriod-laden ass broke in the late 1990s.

Nice post.
PrimeTime said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 2:09 pm

I played baseball during my entire youth and then when I watched a World Series game, I realized just how boring the sport is. Its practically unwatchable. You can watch a movie in between pitches.

Great post and so true, the sport is a dinosaur.
BrickHorn said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 3:02 pm

Nice post. I come from a baseball family, and played baseball for my entire childhood until I finally got sick of it in high school. But there are at least 2-4 sports I’d rather watch and at least 10 sports I’d rather play than baseball (some of them baseball-derived, like the current hipster sport of choice, kickball). It’s just a really, really dull game.
sizzlechest said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 3:42 pm

Bob Costas failed at being a non-midget.
sizzlechest said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 3:53 pm

Oh, and all you needed to do to get the bonus was right-click, Properties.

You people are better than that.
torre said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 4:15 pm

Great read, Bates. I hope your research will include today’s youth perspective. Will ESPN continue to televise the LLWS and Regional Playoffs? I certainly hope. Baseball provides an opportunity for the less physically gifted youth to live a sports dream and gain from lessons from teamwork and competition. For these reasons, I believe baseball will always be referred as the “National Pastime”, albeit the apathy of many.
t1climb1 said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 4:25 pm

Maybe this is more of an SRR50 thing but I would love to see analysis of thr $ in baseball going forward and whether or not baseball can sustain in its current form given the current trends in TV ratings, attendance, merchandising etc. Have we seen the last of the $25MM per year deals and will the fissures between the haves and have nots only get wider in the years to come?
CloseToJumping said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 4:38 pm

Hack Wilson’s 190 rbi mark for a season may never get broken. It wasn’t really even challenged during the steroid era.
Nordberg said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 4:50 pm

Wow, they’ll let anybody blog here nowadays.

Good read Bates.
Vasherized said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 6:29 pm

I thought only HenryJames followed baseball in November.
WWGDD said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 7:50 pm

“During the steroid era”. You’re a fool if you think that was in the past. Even in college ball these athletes are hitting the “undetectable” HGH. They say there aren’t any tests for this but that’s not true. The issue is that they can’t prove why your testosterone levels jumped from a high average of 20 to 190 count. Just added suspicion of the athlete, but no proof of how it got there.

It’s always bothered me for some reason how sports ignores cheating but they do. Some of our favorite all time athletes were probably/ more than likely on the stuff and I don’t blame them. If your competition is on the stuff and running you out of a job worth $20M, then yeah, jump on board.
WWGDD said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 7:53 pm

Nice post by the way. There were some interesting stats a month or so ago. It was a Wednesday night and 2 teams were battling for a wild card spot on ESPN. It was hyped as the biggest game in MLB for the year so far. Over on ESPN2 was a game between non ranked West Virgina and Marshall or Rutgers. 2 non ranked teams, you get the idea. And this non ranked college football game on a Wednesday night almost doubled the ratings for the most important game of the MLB season.

Well played on your post Bates
Dutchie said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 8:07 pm

I can’t wait for baseball to receive equal treatment with golf. I’d argue they are about equally interesting to watch on TV, that is 2-3 times a year, if that.

Dez Bryant’s of the world aside, I’m actually tempted to say that Baseball players are less intelligent than football players as a whole. The sport can be played on mental autopilot, or under the influence of heavy psychedelics with no ill effect. See – Dock Ellis.
Toadvine said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 8:09 pm

Let’s leave Dock Ellis out of this. That man’s feat is truly one that will never be topped. Or approached even. Although Lincecum is the best contender to take a run at it.
topo gigio said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 9:53 pm

I don’t care for baseball one bit. I actively hope for labor strife in the major leagues and continued mismanagement by the insulated, jackass commish whose name I can’t recall.

As far as I’m concerned, baseball just takes airtime from more interesting sports.
Sailor Ripley said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 10:07 pm

h/t BC Forum
czarcw said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 10:32 pm

I agree completely. As a kid, I would watch the Astros play every day while simultaneously acting out each at-bat as if I were the hitter. These days? I can hardly watch more than a couple of innings of the World Series. There was a brief glimmer of hope when Harold Reynolds started calling games for ESPN. He would actually describe the ins and outs of the game (shocking!) similar to how an NFL commentator will break down a pass play. It was the first time I really felt like the game wasn’t just 9 guys out there doing their own thing: swinging for the fences and counting their money. Then ESPN fired HR and I haven’t felt the desire to watch a game since.

But I don’t know if I’d say it’s a dying game, despite my strong feelings on the matter. My evidence against the decline of baseball? The bewildering rise of NASCAR. If that “sport” can grow at a time when there’s 1000 other options, why not baseball?
Sailor Ripley said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 10:49 pm

If two outfielders going after a fly ball could collide and then spontaneously combust, we might have something.
Bill Lee's Love Child said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 10:51 pm

Nothing like an afternoon of flys and skinners. Go Sox!
hoju said:

November 22nd, 2009 at 11:27 pm

Whether baseball is the “National Pastime” is irrelevant.

It has, and always will be, New York’s Pastime. (In fact, it was first called the “national passtime” by local New York writers in the 1850′s when its popularity was first taking off there. Think about that for a second… I seriously doubt the Army units fighting Apaches on the frontier and the immigrant workers building railroads with their bare hands were waiting to read the papers to see the laitest exploits of the Knickerbockers!)

As rarely as our world here in Texas ever looks to New York, I think the fact is that New York has the money, the demographics, and the influence to perpetuate whatever sport they like most. That sport is baseball.
Frank "HackMan" Cromer said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 8:03 am

I’d love for the author to read my screenplay “The Slugger” based on “Fouled Away: the Baseball Tragedy of Hack Wilson” by Clifton Blue Parker. And of course, check out Hack191.com for some great sepia pics…
Jay said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 8:15 am

Baseball appeals to different type of fans…there are some who love stats, other love the history and others like all the great things baseball has to offer; the athleticism, the skill, the suspense…how can you not be on the edge of your seat during an important playoffs game (like all the great games we had this post-season), how can you not feel the suspense, the tension in every pitch, every at-bat and every defenseive play? Anyways who do some of you post messages on this post if you don’t care about the game?
BatesHorn said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 8:20 am

Thanks for all the kind words.

I had not considered looking at little league, but will now, although I would note that we all played soccer growing up and it’s only incrementally improved the national awareness of the sport. I’m trying to track the television numbers on MLB, but it’s complicated by the fact that I have the internet and math skills of a cat that routinely eats lead paint, and unlike other major sports, teams are free to creat their own networks, ala NESN or YES. This complicates the amount of t.v. money sloshing around because some teams are richer than other teams in tv revenue terms by orders of magnitude.

I tire of the “It’s an East Coast (or NY) thing” argument for a number of issues. You’re right, it is an East Coast thing, given the fact that almost the entire population lived EAST of the Mississippi in 1870. But baseball was widely played by both sides during the Civil War, and the first professional team was started in Cincinnati. That’s the nature of anything remotely old in this country, it originated in the East. It’s the same for football as well. Basketball is unique in this regard, as it was developed in Kansas and spread East, primarily through the YMCA.

Civil War Baseball: Baseball and the Blue and the Gray

Given the reports of widespread popularity of the game among Union Soldiers during the civil war, it’s reasonable to extrapolate that the game was popular in the West during the Indian Wars as well. Since Baseball didn’t organize itself into a recognizable professional enterprise by modern standards until the turn of the century, it’s unlikely there was something for troops out west to follow any any sort of real detail.
WWGDD said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 9:55 am

Jay is kidding right??
uthookem said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 10:07 am

Fuck yeah! We now have a baseball version!

Tech – Tim
Shawn Williams – iPowers
Coolest guy on the planet – Clipper Cooper
Baseball – Jay
bateshorn said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 10:20 am

Sweet. Thanks for the props. Apparantly the internet hates me, because my first reply disappeared into the ether of the interwebs.

The little league thing is interesting and something I intend to look at, and I’ll do my best to look at TV deals, although Baseball is a bit schizophrenic, since the individual teams have their own deals and networks (NESN, and Heidi Watney’s exquisite, um, reporting.) And I have the internet skills of a mildly retarded vole.

I would note that Baseball was played widely during the Civil War by soldiers as a form of recreation, particularily on the Union Side, so it was likely played in the West during the Indian wars as well. Given that the vast bulk of the nation’s population was in the East, it’s not surprising that’s where the teams came from, although the first professional team was actually in Cincinnati. Plus, you’d be hard pressed to recognize organized professional baseball in the 1870′s by any standard we’d be used to. It existed, but I doubt the “Indian Killer Daily Standard” carried a lot of box scores.

I would note Football, the great god of Texas Sports, was clearly invented amongst New England Private colleges and formalized at Yale in the 1870′s by Walter Camp.
texasengr said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 11:14 am

I grew up playing baseball as well. I was good at every other sport I played, but I loved pitching so much that I stuck with baseball through high school…

I used to really love watching baseball. There were players I really cared about — Cal Ripken Jr., Mike Mussina, etc. It just seems today, the game is so tainted with steroids that it’s difficult to find players to root for.

The steroid era and the negative attention it brought upon the game and the players, the lack of compelling playoff series in recent years, and the rapid rise of Dominican players have led to a game that many Americans simply find unwatchable. Even former baseball players. That’s bad. We call this the American pass time, but I have trouble finding American players to root for. Not that I try very hard.

Check out the WBC USA roster if you don’t believe me. http://web.worldbaseballclassic.com/rosters/index.jsp?team=usa
Where are the American Super Stars of the 80’s and 90’s?

I’ve thought to myself about how a shorter regular season and more playoff teams could help the game, but that really hurts the “history” aspect of it since statistical records will no longer be even remotely within reach. The game is fundamentally broken and I don’t know how to fix it. I look forward to the next installment.
yojimbox said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 11:29 am

people still watch baseball? i stopped watching after craig biggio and jeff bagwell ditched the game. what’s the point when that douche bag in new york buying mercenary ringers every year?
The Bobs said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 11:39 am

bateshorn, great article… and re: baseball in the Old West – Bat Masterson’s nickname came from his baseball prowess.

I used to absolutely love baseball – still have Bill James’ Baseball Prospectus from ’83 on – but somewhere along the line, it all just slipped away from me. i haven’t watched a game in years now, can’t tell you who won the last couple of World Series, and don’t find that I miss it at all. And I’m not even sure why.

When I cared, I never found the game boring – it rewards knowledge, the more you know about the sport, the more compelling and interesting the game is. I think it was years of the baseball owners making it clear they’d have preferred to buy an NBA franchise instead, and that they barely understood their own game, or what made it special. I know that I have never been to a sporting event that was as exciting as being at Nolan’s fifth no-hitter, and that no sport has an equivalent to a really good pennant race for sustained passion/despair. But… I’ve found out that it only works if you actually care about the teams involved. If you’d told me that I’d feel this way twenty years ago, I’d have argued incessantly. Who knew….
HenryJames said:

November 23rd, 2009 at 11:50 am

can’t tell you who won the last couple of World Series

The Yankees won.
Scipio Tex said:

November 24th, 2009 at 9:10 am

Awesome piece, bates.
Charles Dent said:

November 26th, 2009 at 8:32 am

You know its a boring game when you have has-been, self-obsessed celebrities like Kate Hudson (post nose job) using her mock relationship with A_Rod to spread rumors about herself and promote herself. People were thanking her when The Yankees won-why? What does she have to do with The World series? Maybe because the game is so boring. I enjoyed Werth’s fish impersonation, but that was basically it. Football is where its at. I know The Barkers have nothing but respect for the game. Your article is excellent and I laughed out loud at the Tom Cruise reference. But all those innings…the commercials were better. One of your best articles, man.
Moishe Oishe oy oy oy oy Oishe Moishe oy oy oy said:

November 28th, 2009 at 6:37 am

Who the fuck is Kate Hudson? I looked her up on-line. Her mom was a stripper way back when and with her influence helped her daughter “make it”. But I am very Yid-Yang.If Kate Hudson were to surgically pin back those notorious ears of hers maybe Pro Baseball will pull its ears way,way forward and listen to the fans.
Colby said:

November 28th, 2009 at 7:08 am

Stop messin’, Moses. On a more serious note, I found this article quite scary because I happen to love baseball. I never really considered it boring.
Juan Connelly said:

April 30th, 2010 at 12:50 pm

I have been to your site before. It’s Great! IMHO you have a nice web site

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Baseball: Is it time to rethink our “National Pastime”?

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38 Responses

Chooky said:

scagnetti said:

scagnetti said:

EyesOfTX said:

PrimeTime said:

BrickHorn said:

sizzlechest said:

sizzlechest said:

torre said:

t1climb1 said:

CloseToJumping said:

Nordberg said:

Vasherized said:

WWGDD said:

WWGDD said:

Dutchie said:

Toadvine said:

topo gigio said:

Sailor Ripley said:

czarcw said:

Sailor Ripley said:

Bill Lee's Love Child said:

hoju said:

Frank "HackMan" Cromer said:

Jay said:

BatesHorn said:

WWGDD said:

uthookem said:

bateshorn said:

texasengr said:

yojimbox said:

The Bobs said:

HenryJames said:

Scipio Tex said:

Charles Dent said:

Moishe Oishe oy oy oy oy Oishe Moishe oy oy oy said:

Colby said:

Juan Connelly said:

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