MLB: Despite the NFL's Ratings, Baseball Is Still the Finest Game in the Land

This past October, there was a sad confirmation. Monday Night Football beat the playoff game between the New York Yankees and Detroit Tigers.

Baseball used to be the most popular game in America. In the 1950s and early 1960s, nothing could compete with baseball.  To most American males and many females, baseball was better than any sport—it certainly was preferable to school and it was a learning experience.

How many kids did better in math because they had to learn how to determine Mickey Mantle's batting average or Whitey Ford's ERA?

Bob Costas said it best.

"...we turned to baseball the way a heliotrope turns toward the sun. .... You heard Mel Allen and Curt Gowdy and Lindsey Nelson and Ernie Harwell. Each of these Voices affirmed baseball as the finest game in the land."

In a 1964 Lou Harris poll, baseball was named the most popular sport by 48 percent of those individuals questioned.  In 1998, the number dropped to 17 percent according to a Gallup poll.

In 1994, Sports Illustrated questioned youngsters aged nine to 12 about which sport they enjoyed reading about. Fifty-seven percent selected the NBA.  Seventeen percent responded that it was baseball.

Dwight Gooden, who was with the Cleveland Indians at the time, made an excellent point about basketball and baseball.  "I don't see kids walking to school in baseball spikes."

Bud Selig, who was acting commissioner, bemoaned the lack of great players during the latter part of the 1990s.

"In the Forties and Fifties, baseball had DiMaggio, Williams, and Jackie Robinson. That kind of dominance by today's players doesn't exist."

Fascinating how at about the time of Selig's statement, Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and then Barry Bonds had seasons that not only rivaled, but surpassed those of DiMaggio, Williams and any Robinson that ever played the game.

Baseball demands a commitment like no other sport. It becomes part of everyday life for six months and, now that there are two wild cards, it will be seven months for even more fans.

Baseball teams used to have one or two announcers with whom fans could identify. It was the New York Yankees' Mel Allen, the Brooklyn Dodgers' Red Barber,  the New York Giants' Russ Hodges, the St. Louis Cardinals' Harry Caray and the Pittsburgh Pirates' Bob Prince.

How many "commentators" do the 2012 Yankees have?

Baseball is still the greatest of all games. It has come back from the 1919 Black Sox, it has come back from too many players' strikes and owners' lockouts and it is returning from the use of performance enhancing substances.

It will always be life, at least to some.

Reference:

Smith, Curt. "The Old Ball Game: Baseball is Increasingly a Thing of the Past. What Happened to the National Pastime?" National Review. 6 Apr. 1998, p.44.

URL:National Review Online