According to Fieldston’s baseball coach and form V dean, Tony Marro, “people enjoy fast-paced sports, or sports where there is always something going on.” The modern sporting event follows the qualities of high-paced, high-action games, which baseball cannot encapsulate. In baseball, the concept of throwing a pitch, waiting almost half a minute for the next pitch, and then repeating that rotation again can seem boring to the average viewer. What the ordinary person does not understand is the sheer amount of thought and skill that goes into each pitch. That being said, it does not mean it is entertaining. In fact, it is true that a small amount of action actually occurs over a long 9-inning game spanning about 3 hours. Baseball contains a mental side that is not seen in many other sports which makes it unique but does not give it the action-packed style that it lacks.
The game has changed significantly over the years, including the way the players play the game. Prior to the early 1900’s, the home run was not a strategy that many teams went by. They instead played small ball, meaning they went for base hits and getting people on base. But when Babe Ruth entered the league in 1914, he revolutionized the game with the homerun. His approach at the plate instead of hitting it through the infield for a base hit was to hit it towards the fence or over the fence for a homerun and became incredible at doing so. This made the approach of hitting a homerun much more common. Not only did this change the game incredibly, but it also made it more exciting for fans as baseballs were flying out of stadiums. However, with the extraordinary advances in technology, media, and entertainment over the past fifty and more years, baseball has dropped from “America’s pastime,” and has fallen to the bottom of America’s entertainment.
Less than 40 years ago, the MLB was one of the highest-grossing sports in America but over the past several years, the future of baseball has become very gloomy. Going back to 1973, the World Series received a 30.7 rating which the Associated Press defines as the percent of televisions in the United States that were watching the broadcast. It had almost 35 million viewers. Since then, numbers have dropped significantly. 2020 had 9.8 million viewers, however due to COVID-19, this is not the most accurate collection to look at. But looking at 2018 and 2019, viewership hovered around 14 million and ratings were significantly lower at 8.3 in 2018 and 8.1 in 2019. These numbers have been a result of the huge decline in popularity of baseball over the past 50 or so years and bring up several questions regarding these numbers.
The MLB is in a very dangerous spot with these numbers and it is important to look at what the demographics of the viewers are. In a survey done in 2020, it was found that 16% of ages 18-34 year-olds were considered avid baseball fans and 26% were considered casual fans. For ages 45-64, 22% are considered avid fans and 34% considered casual fans. It was also found as of 2019 that the average baseball fan is 53 years old and ages 18-34 only make up about 29 percent of fans. These numbers heavily threaten the future of the MLB. Without continuing popularity throughout younger generations, the sport will die down. Many current MLB fans became fans when they were kids. If there aren’t already many fans in those younger generations, there won’t just be a big increase in those generations out of nowhere. The MLB must do something about this because if not, as baseball fans continue to get older, it won’t have future generations to rely on.
According to Marro, MLB is running out of time, and with other sports, forms of media, and entertainment constantly improving, it will be a huge challenge to get out of the hole they have dug themselves in: “There is much more competition. The NBA is much bigger than it used to be and the NFL has become a monster in the sports world.”
Baseball used to be the main sport with much less competition from others including the NBA and NFL which have destroyed the MLB’s ratings and viewership in the past several years. With much more competition from them, there is much that the MLB needs to do to keep up with changes in the sports world. It will be incredibly important for the MLB to implement rule changes to the game including shortened time counts in between pitches. With an average of 23.8 seconds in between every single pitch, it can be incredibly boring for fans to sit waiting for the next pitch as the pitcher slowly strolls back to the mound.
As Marro said, “shortening the game is the best move. If you look at rule changes in other sports with the NFL and NBA they have both been progressing but the MLB has not had many rule changes. It is so difficult to change the rules in the MLB.” This is a huge problem because the things fans desire about the game have changed but the MLB is not marketing towards that. For example, the NFL changed their pass interference calls to be reviewable if a team were to challenge after many fans constantly complained about several crucial poor calls which ruined games. In the MLB, there are many ways to speed up the game but the MLB has made minimal to no changes to address this issue.
The other part of competition amongst those sports has to do with being able to play them. As Marro said, “it is a nuanced sport because it is not easy to play. You have to have a certain amount of space to play a game of baseball whereas basketball you need a hoop and football you just need open space.” With fewer people growing up playing baseball, it makes it much harder for them to be drawn into the sport. Yes, you can go outside and have a baseball toss in the backyard, but to actually play a real game, you have to have a baseball field which is not always easy to access.
Marro also discussed the changing of the gameplay of baseball in the MLB. He said, “the biggest change is that there is much power in terms of power pitchers and hitters who run the sport now. The home run is more important than the single and double and put the bunt down.” For many, people would believe that this would benefit the game and make it more entertaining, however, it has not been able to truly bring more to watch it. The main hypothesis as to why this is is because of the MLB’s marketing. As Marro said, “the MLB also does not market their players very well. Mike Trout might be the best player in baseball ever and many people do not even know who he is.” This is true and in comparison to the NHL, NFL, and NBA, they have done a terrible job. Everyone knows who LeBron James is and everyone knows who Tom Brady is. These are the players of this generation and people barely know Mike Trout, who is very possibly the best baseball player of all time. He is rarely in the media, while whenever someone goes through sports media, LeBron James and Tom Brady are always bound to pop up somewhere.
With ever-increasing technology and forms of media, there is another competitor that has upped its game in the past 10 or so years. As Marro said, “growing up I just had cable. There was no internet or streaming so people just have other things they can choose to do. Back in the day you would have baseball on in the living room in the background but today is just isn’t like that because people have other choices.” With competition coming from so many different cable programs, sports leagues have been forced to enter a new level of advertisements, improvements, and accessibility. So much media is so easily accessible now with options from different networks and platforms including Netflix, Hulu, Amazon Prime Video, and several others. Subscription-based media platforms have become a must need in entertainment and the MLB in 2008 launched their platform “MLB At-Bat” which gives fans a subscription-based platform to live stream games from all over the country on. This addition to their accessibility should pick up viewership for the MLB in coming years, however, there is so much more the MLB must do in order to keep up with the growing market of entertainment, sports, and media.
The MLB has made few attempts to improve the league, including juicing the balls to make them travel off the bat farther, attempting to lower the play clock in between pitches, and few other minimal things, but there needs to be more done to save the reputation of such a well-renowned league. Turning on a basketball or football game always gets people into it even if they don’t care who wins, but for baseball, the only time it is entertaining is when people are rooting for the specific team and when the stakes are high, specifically in the playoffs or at the end of the season. Part of the reason for this is that it is very hard to put into perspective the importance of a single game considering each team plays 162 games in a season but also because the games do not include much action and take very long. Without some sort of change to the game’s rules including an implementation of time restrictions of components that may increase the action of the game, it will be very hard for the MLB to keep up its reputation as “America’s pastime.”
