MLB's Quiet Storm
Growing up baseball was my first love. I'm still one of the few people my age that still follow the game. Few of friends follow baseball anymore. Like many my age baseball was the first sport most of us were introduced to. I really didn't even become interested in basketball or football until I entered high school. The combination of little league baseball, topps baseball cards, bat day at affordable stadium games all contributed to the center of the baseball universe continuously being evolved around those little fields of dreams. But, as the recent Nobel Laureate's famous tune says, times they are a changing.
Times have actually changed a lot. As the only major sport without a salary cap one wouldn't be able to tell by current player salaries that MLB has a quiet storm brewing. But it does. The numbers all around are not encouraging. The network television deals are largely propped up by the major media markets of Boston, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. In these cities baseball still rules. Fewer and fewer African American kids have any interest in the sport that was the center of this country's social conscious in 1947.
The reality is that the average age of a MLB fan is 55 years old. I had to read that stat like four times before it registered then I realized I am only 10 years younger than that. That's basically retirement age. Critics have long said baseball is boring for much more than the mechanics and pace of the game. Players are having to deal with personality and style straight jackets because of the rigid rules, both written and unspoken, that were established when there weren't any roads and the primary mode of transportation was riding horses. The New York Yankees still have rules about hair length and facial hair. Really? Traditionalist criticize flamboyant behavior going so far as to decry certain players from certain countries not having respect for the game. That's a topic for a future article.
Professional sports is as much entertainment as it is an arena of competition. The element of entertainment is absent in baseball. In twenty years it may be too late for the league to address and the commissioner's ideas of speeding up the game and tweaking those rules are not the solution. As it stands MLB benefits tremendously from its 162 game schedule with tickets sales in the 70 million range seasonally compared to about 18 million for the NFL and 21 million tickets sold for the NBA. How long will this be sustainable is the billion dollar question.
MLB would be best served to simply let the players express themselves and have fun. What MLB possibly needs is to get Richard Branson involved so he can bring his Virgin Group's brand of fun to remove the slack tie culture that still permeates the game.
Times have actually changed a lot. As the only major sport without a salary cap one wouldn't be able to tell by current player salaries that MLB has a quiet storm brewing. But it does. The numbers all around are not encouraging. The network television deals are largely propped up by the major media markets of Boston, New York City, Chicago and Los Angeles. In these cities baseball still rules. Fewer and fewer African American kids have any interest in the sport that was the center of this country's social conscious in 1947.
The reality is that the average age of a MLB fan is 55 years old. I had to read that stat like four times before it registered then I realized I am only 10 years younger than that. That's basically retirement age. Critics have long said baseball is boring for much more than the mechanics and pace of the game. Players are having to deal with personality and style straight jackets because of the rigid rules, both written and unspoken, that were established when there weren't any roads and the primary mode of transportation was riding horses. The New York Yankees still have rules about hair length and facial hair. Really? Traditionalist criticize flamboyant behavior going so far as to decry certain players from certain countries not having respect for the game. That's a topic for a future article.
Professional sports is as much entertainment as it is an arena of competition. The element of entertainment is absent in baseball. In twenty years it may be too late for the league to address and the commissioner's ideas of speeding up the game and tweaking those rules are not the solution. As it stands MLB benefits tremendously from its 162 game schedule with tickets sales in the 70 million range seasonally compared to about 18 million for the NFL and 21 million tickets sold for the NBA. How long will this be sustainable is the billion dollar question.
MLB would be best served to simply let the players express themselves and have fun. What MLB possibly needs is to get Richard Branson involved so he can bring his Virgin Group's brand of fun to remove the slack tie culture that still permeates the game.
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