It took me a little longer to get to this than I wanted; I still haven't really wrapped my head around the fact that I was in Wisconsin for a month, I worked all those hours for a month, every single day. No matter- we were victorious on both the national and state level, and as an added bonus I'm on a bus to DC to see my girlfriend.
When we left off, roughly a month ago, we were talking about the declining percentage of black players on major league rosters. Like I said before, the percentage peaked during the mid 1970's and has fallen to a low point in this decade. WHen I ask my black friends why they do not enjoy watching or playing baseball, they always say that it's boring. When I was younger I use to get offended when somene said that- it hurt my feelings. To me, when someone said that my favorite sport was boring, it was an indictment on who I was and my ability to discern what was entertaining. Like many Black kids who were above academically and liked weird things, I was also sensitive to accusations that I "acted white" and tried to minimize those moments as much as possible. The fact that I liked baseball was something to hide. Now that I'm older, I can accept that just because someone doesn't like what I do doesn't mean that they think that somethings wrong with me, well at least most of the time.
Besides, I can understand why some people would find baseball boring. The pivotal matchup is between the batter and pitcher, so there are not a lot of moving parts, except when a ball is hit. Even more importantly, the people in charge of baseball do not seem to understand that they are selling entertainment. Not to say that there aren't many people who find baseball to be entertaining; MLB has shattered attendance records every year for the past few years now. But there are definitely ways to make the game more entertaining.
When I lived at home and we had ESPN Classic, I use to love when they played classic baseball games, particularly from the 1970's. Obviously, these games were "classic" so chances are that they would be enjoyable, tempered only slightly by the fact that I already knew what would happen at the end. What was immediately striking though was how quickly the game was played. There was no stepping out of the batters box every five seconds, no incessant changing of pitchers to get the key matchup for one batter. When the pitcher received the ball he almost immediately stepped back onto the rubber and delivered the next pitch. The players were different too, they were wirey, built more for speed and defense than power hitting. Even the big sluggers looked like the middle infielders of today. The parks were larger, which meant less home runs were hit. The fields were turf which not only rewarded speed, but made it an almost necessary component to any successful team. There were more triples, more stolen bases, it was just a more action packed environment. I love baseball in any era, but the baseball of that era was just so exciting because of the combination of speed, power, pitching, and hitting.
John Kruk, the portly former Padres and Phillies first baseman and current talking head for Baseball Tonight once told a lady "I'm not an athlete, I'm a ballplayer." Well, in my opinion, baseball was built more for athletes and less for "ballplayers" during the 1970's than it is today. The action of the game was more fluid and the actual athletic ability of the players was more apparent- the game was just a much better showcase for those skills Of the three major sports, baseball is undoubtedly the one that takes the most specialization in order to play well. The skill set it takes to succeed in baseball doesn't come as naturally to athletes; except for a few notable exceptions (Bob Feller, Al Kaline, Robin Yount, Alex Rodriguez) no one can step off of a high school diamond and even begin to compete in the major leagues. Further more, the way baseball is played today- on grass fields, with small parks, instead of in large parks on turf fields, it blunts the differences between the really good athletes and the big fat guys who can just hit home runs.*
* Side note, this has nothing to do with my feelings on strategy or anything of the like. With the way parks are today (grass/small) it is not optimal strategy to have a bunch of fast guys who slap at the ball, steal bases, and play good/great defense. I love how you can be successful with many different kinds of body types in baseball, I just think that as entertainment it would be beneficial if the advantage to good/great athletes was greater than it is now.
I think it's the combination of the two that is the ultimate culprit. The way the game is played today means less casual fans, less fans who are not roped in by tradition, perhaps less Black fans. Less Black fans means less Black people to pass the game on to their children, meaning less Black people playing the game, which means less Black athletes to choose from. I think the key is starting with the fan base- making the game more accessible, which would really just require some tweaks around the edges rather than a complete overhaul. Baseball competed for the Black fan and Black athlete even when football and basketball around, there is no reason why they cannot again.
One final reason that I often see sited in articles addressing this problem is the lack of access to college scholarships for baseball players as compared to football/basketball. Obviously, college football and basketball are the two cash cows of the college athletics industry so it is in the universities interest to pay for the best players to come to their schools. Baseball is not, which means that there are much less scholarships and that most of them are for half-tuition or something like that. For a poor Black kid from the city, it's not too difficult a choice about which sport to persue; the one that will pay for four years of school with plenty of national exposure, plenty of groupies willing to do whatever I want, and plenty of boosters willing to pay for things for me. Or the other sport. The flipside, of course, is that baseball is the only major sport where you can still be drafted right out of high school, even though the salary is low in the minors, top prospects still get millions of dollars in signing bonuses. Besides, it's not like there are that many who have to choose at this point. It is important first to build a new fan base, getting them to choose baseball is later down the road.
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