Goodbye Baseball: It's Not Even the All-Star Break, but I Am Ready for the NFL

Dear Baseball,

I have been thinking about how to write this for a few weeks. I have been trying to think of a way of telling you that would lessen the hurt, but it is not possible. So, I am going to be direct, and if you get hurt, so be it.

It’s over. We’re done. I can’t take it anymore. It was fun while it lasted, but we are through.
I did not expect it to happen so quickly; normally, I’m with you until the All-Star game, and then whenever you call I am “busy” with something else, like preseason football and preparing for the CFB season. Then when the playoffs start, you’re just a booty call to occupy me until the weekend when the real games are on.

It started this year like every other year. Come February, I started getting excited, because pitchers and catchers start reporting to camp. Then the whole team is there. I peek down your shirt during the preseason games, and you tease me enough that come opening day, I am excited and think that maybe this year could be the year—the year I rediscover my love and excitement for you. But alas, it’s not happening this year. 

If I was going to be nice, I would blame myself. But, in truth, I blame you. It’s your failure to adapt to a changing culture, it’s your fault that you refuse to embrace technology, it’s your fault that you choose to be led by geriatric sports writers who refuse to let you change so they can hold onto their mystic summers of youth when baseball reigned supreme. It’s your fault that you have a backward seeing commissioner that can’t seem to get out of his own way and seems determined to embrace the past rather than look to the future.

You have failed to adapt and capture our attention in the year 2012. There are simply too many options for us, and our attention spans have shortened. We no longer have the patience to sit in front of a TV for 3.5 hours watching Kansas City and Seattle battle through a 1-0 game. Your game is slow, and our eyes and minds are fast. You're competing with a great season of basketball playoffs, the growth of world and USA soccer, the resurgence (hopefully) of Tiger Woods and the anticipation of football. Hell, the NFL and CFB have found away to steal some of your prime months simply through the draft and CFB realignment.

But do you pay any attention to this? Do you care that a greater number of people growing up don’t care about baseball, or are you content to be a reactionary force in the world of sports? From social networking to the TV experience to technology, all other sports are embracing these—yet you still keep your head in the dirt.

It’s not all over, we both know that. I will come back from time to time. Sox-Yankees is always a good time to get together with you, have a drink and delude ourselves into pretending that this time it will work. The World Series might be a great time to hook up, if the right two teams are playing. You're good for a hook-up but that is all you are going to be to me—a cheap hook-up when there is nothing better to choose from.

Thanks for the memories. There were some great ones, but like those mystic summers of old, my memories of you are slowly fading with time.