Field of Cash: Baseball Has Been Relegated to the Rich

The annual debut of Major League Baseball (MLB) came and went with as much lackluster fury as was found in this year’s Major League Baseball free agency. This year’s prized free agents were Bryce Harper and Manny Machado.  Prized or not, their associated “bidding wars” were practically not only nonexistent, but due to their prolongment, almost forgotten.  Finally, their signings, once they finally did happen, were anti-climactic. Like its free agency, baseball’s opening week would start and end with the same level of tedium. By the end of the week, talking heads weren’t discussing who they think will win the World Series as much as they were discussing how to keep the World Series, well, alive.

If the saying “bad publicity is good publicity” holds any truth then Major League Baseball isn’t lacking for publicity. The Cincinnati Reds were able to break their record low, in terms of attendance, at their 17-year-old Great American Ballpark in just their third game of this year’s campaign. According to Dave Jablonski of the Dayton Daily News, “[t]he announced attendance was 7,799. The previous low was 9,087 in 2009.” Although being early April in Cincinnati, the weather may have played a role in deterring fans from coming out to the game. However, that is no excuse for the Toronto Blue Jays, who play in a dome, from managing to reach a decade low in attendance.

Granted, both the Reds and Blue Jays are not, currently, premier baseball teams and neither is picked to win their divisions. Still the Los Angeles Dodgers have won the National League Pennant in the past two years, yet they may start see dwindling crowds as well. Houston Mitchell from the LA Times reports, “Here’s the problem the Dodgers have: A lot of people feel unsafe going to Dodger Stadium.” Mitchell writes this after a man was assaulted as he departed Dodger Stadium following their loss to the Arizona Diamondbacks on March 29.  The victim was put on life support with a fractured skull. In the American League, on April 1^st, the Cleveland Indians, the reigning AL Central Division Champions, started their home opener off with a protest. The protests were not in angst against the Cleveland Indians logo, which is no longer in use starting this season, but rather about the Indians needing to change their team name.

There are three factors that Major League Baseball must solve to avoid the same fate as American department stores – once prominent statures of American society left to wither away on the surfaces of vacant parking lots.

First, the MLB must somehow help its stars gain popular awareness. Currently, the most well-known Major League Baseball stars aren’t familiar to the average American. In the NFL, quarterbacks are well known both to football fans and non-football fans alike. In nearly each NFL division, not just conference, there are nationally recognized stars – mainly quarterbacks. Average Americans know who Ben Roethlisberger is, even if they never watched him play. However, ask these same Americans who Clayton Kershaw, Chris Sale, or John Lester is and it’s like asking an average American who the starting left guard on the Patriots is. That’s baseball’s issue - its big-name stars have the same level of national familiarity as that of an offensive lineman in the NFL. The difficult aspect of a player’s “brand” awareness is the level of impact or lack thereof that individual hitters may have on a team.

Take for example all the accolades that the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim (say that ten times fast) outfielder, Mike Trout, has received and yet he and his team lack any sort of deep postseason run. Trout’s Angeles made the postseason once in 2014 and were promptly swept. That’s not good. To have a player who is a 2x American League MVP, and a 7x All-Star never have a playoff win, let alone win a playoff series, is terrible for the brand of baseball. Trout, for all his accolades, is a hampered baseball ambassador because he isn’t around when most people tune into baseball – during the playoffs.

The second issue, and one that is harder to fix, is the fact that the game of baseball is long and, at times, dull. To the enamored fan, baseball is layered with strategy. But to the average person, it is nothing more than a lot of winding up, throwing, and maybe once in a while, a hit. Whereas football and basketball have constant motion, constant action. Even on a one yard running back handoff, there is more action than in three innings of baseball. In other words, it is easy to watch football because there is always something going on. It is sad to state but war sells in America. Why else would people spend money going to see war movies or spend money playing warlike video games? It’s because for some reason war is entertaining to the average person and that’s what football brings to the table. Football is the “battle on the gridiron” and baseball just isn’t.

Now Major League Baseball has started to create initiatives to speed up the game. This season the time between innings, regarding commercial breaks, has decreased for locally televised games from 2:05 minutes to 2:00 and will decrease from 2:45 minutes to 2:25 for nationally televised games. Mound visits have also been reduced from six a game to five. Finally, in 2020, all pitchers must face at least three batters before they may be switched, unless that pitcher incurs an injury before facing three batters. This rule is to help reduce the amount of times a pitcher comes into a game for a certain situation and reduces the time of the game. Although the most controversial rule proposal, the pitch clock, has not yet been instituted, the MLB Commissioner, Rob Manfred, said “the clock is coming to the majors soon.”

But will the pace of play rule changes have any effect on gaining more baseball viewers? It seems unlikely. The average NFL game is actually longer than the average MLB game and yet the NFL’s viewership has been growing. In Aaron Gordon’s Sportsonearth.com piece, “baseball games average 2 hours and 57 minutes and 33 seconds.” The average NFL game takes 3 hours 10 minutes and 34 seconds. There is also the very fact that although a baseball game takes a smaller amount of time to complete than a football game, football season is far shorter than baseball season. The NFL regular season is a measly 16 games, which are usually played on Sundays, whereas an MLB regular season consists of 162 games all scattered throughout the week. In short, pace of play is not baseball’s issue as much as one might think.

The issue with baseball is that it is a game that was prized as America’s “past time” because everyone, boys and girls, played it. However, now with the onslaught of so many more organized sports and entertainment options, baseball gets lost in the mix.  What was once an American rite of passage – neighborhood kids playing baseball at their local park - is becoming a piece of Americana nostalgia. The issue with baseball is more an issue with the need for kids to find hobbies that they “must” excel at. The casual for fun hobby is becoming bygone. Marc Fisher, of the Washington Post, wrote, “David Ogden, a University of Nebraska at Omaha researcher who focuses on youth baseball, says selective teams produce better-trained players for high school and college teams but diminish baseball's appeal to the casual player. The high cost — about $2,000 a year in many cases — limits opportunities for lower-income families, and the high level of play leaves more broad-based organizations such as Little League and YMCA teams with ‘a lot of kids who can't get the ball over the plate, so the game is less fun and kids drop out,’ Ogden says.”

In other words, baseball, at the youth age, is taking the egalitarian aspect of baseball away. In its place   ushers in not necessarily “the most skilled players” but those players whose parents can afford the high costs to play youth baseball. In Shane Thomas’ RegalMag.com article, which sources the “Chicago Tribune,” states that these rich parents start to try and keep up with each other, which increases the cost of baseball for everyone else. “To keep up with the cream of the crop, extra training is necessary with private pitching or hitting coaches outside of team practices, running a player at least $40 a pop once or twice a week.  A quality baseball glove can cost up to $100 or more, aluminum bats run into the hundreds of dollars and name-brand cleats start around $150.”

What was once the sport my grandparents relished is now a sport that is economically in the same realm as golf, hockey, and lacrosse. Baseball was once a sport that kids would play in local neighborhood leagues, at grassy fielded municipal parks or even backyards. Now, with the extent of hyperactive rich parents increasing the pressure on their sons/daughters to be the next Mickey Mantle, it decreases the chances of an average middle/low class American having the ability to taste what was once a genuinely egalitarian and pure American past time. Baseball was so great because it was never as physically selective as, say, football or basketball. Unlike basketball, it’s okay not to be the tallest player on a baseball team; unlike football, being a behemoth of a man isn’t required.  Baseball in America today is being sucked into the modern gilded age.  What is  now required to play baseball isn’t as much a bat and glove as it is the depth of your parents’ pockets. Baseball is an entirely American sport, and it is dealing with an entirely American problem.