Time to Have some Fun!

So those of you that know me know that there is only one major sport that I really care for other than arguing with idiots and that is baseball.  As I am writing this we are in the heart of the MLB post season and to lighten up the conversation some I have decided to write a bit about my reflections of this brilliant, yet in some ways dying sport.

Baseball has been played professionally for something like 130 years and the World Series has been played consistently (except in '94) for most of that time.  This is a sport that really grew with our country.  Through the hard times: The Spanish American War, The Great War, The Great Depression, WWII, Korea, Vietnam, and Nixon, baseball has been there to calm the minds and lift the spirits.

So when I see the game today on television, as much as I enjoy it, I know that being able to watch that game is what is killing it as well.  Television ratings now rule the game.  They start games later, there are more pauses, and the ticket prices have sky-rocketed.

These three factors lead to the main reason that the sport is in decline and that is because they are no longer marketing, nor have they been in 35 years, to what should be their chief audience.

Kids.

When baseball was truly the national pastime, games quite often started not long after school got out and the tickets were dirt cheap, even when you factor in proportionality of today's money.  Kids are shut out of the game unless their parents have a ton of cash, let them stay up late and don't fight them for the remote, or if you are like me, make it a point to have live baseball on the radio (the way it was intended), keep supplies like balls and gloves around for when my boy is ready to start playing catch, and use a huge chunk of a paycheck to take the boy to the Bay Area for three hours of great food, good people, a great game, and what can only really be summed up as Heaven.

To survive the game had to make some concessions, as all of them do, for advertising revenue and all that, but there is a limit to where they are destroying the game.  Look at Nascar and Football.  Those are two sports that are completely ruled by their advertisers and they are now both abominations of what they once were.  A few years ago baseball wanted to put small ads on the bases themselves, on the field.  Luckily this got shut down.  The base itself is what the game is named after and they're are beautiful white padded squares.  An ad would have destroyed one of the last pure items left in sports.

The other reason that the game is dying is because as it may gain some fans, our culture and our current society has moved us away from the game.  We got ourselves into a big goddamn hurry and all of a sudden find something like baseball boring.  Baseball is a game of total nuance, a cerebral mindset, and patience, but in the end it pays off to one of the best and most unique sports.  Of the major sports in the U.S, it is the only one where there is no timer, every field is different, and their two leagues play by different rules.  Not only that, it is one of the only sports that you take a scorecard to and fans are encouraged to keep their own score, which in baseball, is a skill.  It is one of the few sports that puts one man against a team, then breaks that team up and each one of them then has to challenge your team.  One against all, but no one man can control that game.  Not only that, but no one team is immune to one great swing of the bat.

You know that hitting a big league fastball is still considered one of the hardest feats in all of athletics.

Anyway...I should stop ranting.  I am just saddened that people do not take the time to appreciate things as much anymore.  We lost our ability to really relate to rituals and learning to calculate things on a slower pace.  We want answers now and are not going to do your silly steps to get them.  Another example of this is shaving.  We want to get it done with so we get that awful foam in a can stuff and those VERY expensive throw away razors instead of taking the time and learning how to use the "badger and the blade" to get a better shave.  We want quantity, not quality.  The Wal-Marts of the world have taught us that everything should be cheap and disposable.  Those press-board shelves that Wal-Mart sells may only be sixty bucks or whatever, but you will have to buy them 5 time in your life time instead of spending five-hundred bucks on a nice oak shelf that will last your life time and your child's as well.

So it may be a backwards way to say it...but Wal-Mart has destroyed baseball.  I know that is not true, but I will admit that I take pleasure in blaming Wally-World for everything.

 So now I am rounding third, and heading home...