Why Baseball Is STILL America's Pastime!

Surely you have heard this before: Football is the new national pastime. As football's popularity has climbed to dizzying heights, many have said that baseball has been replaced, that football is now the king, that baseball is all but forgotten.

I say "wrong."

Please allow me to first say that indeed football is more popular than baseball and for good reasons: It's easy to follow; a great excuse to have a party; and very TV-friendly. All important in appealing to Americans. 

In terms of being easy to follow, there is only one game a week. How easy is that? You only have to commit three hours a week! People spend more time a week on their hourly lunch than they do a football game.

Of course, three hours a week for sixteen weeks in a row is asking a lot of fans, so they throw in a week off. "Take a Sunday off and run down to the home improvement store. We'll meet you back here next week."

Football is also popular because it is a great excuse to party! VERY big with Americans. Again, once a week. On a Sunday. In the winter. Why not have a party? Football is a great excuse to hang out with friends, get drunk, and eat finger food. "Who's playing? Who cares! Pass the hot wings and a beer!"

Let's face it, Americans will celebrate any reason to eat spicy food and drink beer. We celebrate Cinco de Mayo, for crying out loud! 

Finally, football is TV-friendly, very important to a culture that sits down each week to watch Fox's glorified karaoke show, American Idol. Football can be broadcast horizontally because even a pass is easy to follow with a camera. What if they tried broadcasting baseball horizontally?! Can you image a camera man trying to follow a line drive from left to right?! Humanly impossible!

Bad for TV? Bad for America. 

So, yes, football is more popular than baseball and those are some reasons why. But it is NOT the national pastime. That still belongs to baseball. What proves this is what people claim to be its heavy burden: Steroids. Steroid use has proven that baseball is America's Pastime.

Sound crazy? Hold on.

When Alex Rodriguez was recently "busted" for past steroid use, the sports world responded: "What a black eye this was for baseball!" "Can baseball recover from this latest scandal?" They called it a scandal!

There was public outrage! "Players cheated by using steroids to enhance their abilities!" Well, not any players...baseball players!

In 2006, the NFL had a steroid bust, too. San Diego linebacker Shawne Merriman was suspended for the first four games—25 percent of the season—for steroid use.

How did fans and the press respond?! Cries of cheating and black eyes? Was Merriman subpoenaed to testify to congress? No! He finished third for the Defensive Player of the Year award!!! What, they didn't think the steroids he was doing in August may have helped his performance in October?! There was no talk about him spitting in the face of Dick Butkus or Ray Nitschke!

A baseball player does steroids and it's an assault on the game's integrity. In football, it's a month off with an award waiting at the end of the year.  Truth be told, nobody cared. About the steroids or football's so-called integrity.

Why? Because football doesn't have integrity. It's entertaining, sure, but integrity? Football is about nachos and potato chips! Football is about getting dressed up once a week in the teams' gear, getting together with others, and talking while the lack of action* behind them goes on unnoticed, at least until some team gets into the red zone.

Sports fans care about the history of baseball, about the accomplishments, about what it stand for. Nobody feels that way about football! 

The fact that people get as emotionally upset as they do about steroids in baseball—calling for records to be erased or given an asterisk—and the fact that they don't about steroids in football—voting to give players performance awards—proves that while America has fun with football, it truly cares about baseball.

That love, that identity, that quest for purity, that is what football doesn't have and that is what makes baseball America's National Pastime.

*Football fans love to say that baseball is too slow. Football has a one-hour clock, yet takes three hours to play! Huddles, time outs, two-minute warnings, injuries, scoring breaks, and penalties. The time lost on a penalty in football is ridiculous!

Why does the ref have to get on a mic and tell us the number and the infraction? No other sport does that. Just call the foul, assess the penalty, and let's move on! Chances are the call is wrong anyway.