The Retort

October World Series: Who Cares?

November 4th, 2011 by Cory Lovec Of The Retort Staff

“World Series Set, But Shh, Don’t Tell Anyone”.

“Baseball as America’s Pastime Continues to Fall Further into the Past.”

“Poll: NFL Beats Baseball Again as America’s Most Popular Sport.”

“Is Baseball a Dying Sport?”

These are some of the recent headlines regarding the sport that for many years dominated viewership in America. For the past 125 years, baseball has been “America’s Game”. The saying is “as American as baseball and apple pie”, not “football and apple pie”. But baseball has seen a steady decline in media coverage and popularity over the past 50 years. Last year, a poll held by Harris Interactive revealed that 35% of respondents listed football as their favorite sport, compared to baseball’s 16%. Contrarily, in 1985, only 24% of respondents listed football as their favorite and 23% said baseball.

Some say that the moment professional football became highly recognized and popular was the 1958 NFL Championship - which has since been termed “The Greatest Game Ever Played.” This game between the then-Baltimore Colts and the New York Giants was decided in overtime. But this overtime was different than the overtimes of other sports; people were captivated and excited by the fact that it was sudden death, and the champion of the season was decided by a single game (much different from basketball, baseball, and hockey—which all played seven-game series to decide their champion). Football became the sport for the ever-changing and growing American society. It became the sport for the overwhelming and increased pace of the American life. On the other hand, baseball has been the “patient man’s” game or a “thinking game”. There are stats that have calculated that of a 2 ½ hour baseball game, only around 8 minutes of that time is actual game play. This is why a large majority of people who follow baseball are from an older generation.

Baseball routinely will get roughly 20 million viewers for each game of the World Series. For games 1-4 of the World Series, the number of fans is even less—at around 15 million. An average of 17.9 million viewers watched each NFL regular season game last year. Furthermore, in 2010 over 154.3 million American viewers watched the Super Bowl between the Steelers and Cardinals; this means that with the population of America approximately 310 million at that time, roughly 50% of Americans watched the Super Bowl. In that same year, the World Cup Championship game, the USA/Canada Olympic Hockey Gold Medal Game, Game 7 of the Celtics/Lakers NBA Finals and the BCS College Football National Championship Game together drew only 110.9 million American viewers! This shows that maybe baseball isn’t really “America’s Game” anymore, but most people would already agree with that.

One problem that many people have with MLB (and the NBA and NHL for that matter) is that there are so many regular season games that it makes each individual game less important. Losing one of 162 MLB games is not at all devastating to a team. Losing one of only 16 regular season NFL games could be the difference between winning the Super Bowl and sitting at home watching the playoffs. For example, if the Packers had not won their final two regular season games, they would not have even made the playoffs. Plus, the NFL is a one-and-done playoff system; if a team loses once they’re done (the Packers had to win ALL FOUR of their playoff games to become champions last year). MLB playoff match-ups are really a series of games. In reality, every NFL playoff game is like a MLB game 7.

Baseball has also seen hits because of the rumors of performance-enhancing drugs. The all-time home run record holder (Barry Bonds) has been accused of using steroids. So have other “greats” like Mark McGuire, Sammy Sosa, Roger Clemons, Alex Rodriguez, and Jose Conseco - just to name a few. This would be like finding out Brett Favre, Joe Montana, and Barry Sanders all used steroids in their careers. Many people simply don’t want to watch athletes “cheat” by using performance enhancing drugs (not to say that this hasn’t happened in other sports as well—it is just not as publicized).

When the Olympics are on, countries root for their “home team” or country. In that same idea, many people feel that American viewers have lost interest with baseball because of the fact that less Americans are playing. Since 1990, the number of foreign-born players in the major leagues has more than doubled.

Finally, of course, many people get annoyed with baseball because of the lack of a salary cap. Big-market teams with money to spend can literally BUY wins. Teams like the New York Yankees, Boston Red Sox, and Philadelphia Phillies are continually contenders not necessarily because of great organizations and game plans, but because their teams consist of what are essentially All-Star lineups. Now, “buying” all-star teams does not necessarily lead to championships, but everyone would agree that it sure doesn’t hurt! And many people can’t stand how certain players can make such an extravagant amount of money each year, even compared to other professional sports (i.e. Alex Rodriguez makes around $50 million per year).

So, if you were one of the Americans who actually watched the World Series, you may wonder where baseball will be in the years to come. Will the MLB ever change rules to adapt to the changing times? Will baseball become irrelevant in America? Will the MLB ever resurge and become as popular (percentage-wise) as it once was? Only time will tell.