Children Are Abandoning Baseball
wsj.com
wsj.com
1.) You need a shit-load of people to play baseball anything like for-real. At minimum 15-20 people for two teams. Pretty tough to do as a kid, unless you're free to roam free all over town to gather a crew, which approximately 0% of kids have license/protection from CPS to do.
2.) You need a big enough area for a baseball diamond, where you don't have to worry about knocking out a window with a foul ball or an errant throw. Mostly, you aren't allowed to use the actual baseball fields to just play pickup. Compare with soccer or football, where any old open area is good enough, or basketball, which needs a hoop but probably takes the least space.
3.) Everybody needs at least a baseball glove. You also need a bat and a ball or two. Compare with sports that really don't require any specialized equipment, like soccer, football(two-hand-touch or recess-tackle style), and basketball.
4.) If you live in the northern half of the US, the season for playing baseball is almost exclusively during the summer months, when school isn't in session.
5.) Baseball on TV is maybe a half-step better than watching paint dry, and you have to pay for the privilege. Since they cleaned up the steroids, it's boring as hell.
My brothers play for a historic reenactment team of that era and the game resembles present day softball than baseball with its casual play. There's players on their team age 18 to 70 and most of the teams they play are composed of people in smaller towns doing what they did 140 years ago, today. One of the more interesting games they hold every year is played on the statehouse lawn against our state representatives after work.
It was pretty neat to watch, although it took me a bit to understand it as the rules then were significantly different from present day rules.
That makes it much harder to improvise a playing field than is the case for baseball, cricket (needs a fairly small area where the ball can bounce off, and having an unpredictable bounce is considered a plus there), or, especially, soccer.
To play soccer, the minimum you need is an old newspaper or old rags that you shape into a ball-like form, something to tie around it to make it keep that shape, and anything that can be placed on the ground to indicate where one should imagine the goal posts to be, such as the coats of four players, marks drawn in the sand, etc.
1. It's difficult to play without least a couple midfielders, a goalie, and some defenders
3. Everyone needs at least a lacrosse stick, and a ball (although lacrosse balls are small and easy to lose, so it's better to have a few on hand)
4. Same
It's also one of the most expensive sports to play, and few schools (high schools at least) subsidize it like they do with American Football.
On the space side, we played where ever - you just needed a place to put down some bases or some trees that are relatively evenly spaced in 4 corners.
We made it more fun by playing with crappy tennis rackets and tennis balls we "popped".
You're right about "pure" baseball, but kids create their own ways to play games and baseball can be changed enough to be fun and fast paced.
However, it's difficult to get adults to organize that kind of thing. I wonder if the fact that kids need adults to drive them is a factor.
That last bit is speculation. What's true is that numbers 1-3 aren't really a bar to practice, if the kids actually care.
Aside from Japan, and now apparently Cuba, I haven't heard of it being played anywhere.
Most of the world plays football (soccer for the US folks here).
http://espn.go.com/mlb/latinosrise/columns/story?columnist=s...
It solves some of your problems - you can see poor kids in India playing it in alleyways pretty much the same way rich kids in England do - and, I think, it's a bit easier to hit the ball.
Plus breaking for tea is part of the game...
I think bowling competently is the barrier for new players.
We also played "pepper" which was a bunting game with at least two kids. "Hotbox" and "burnout", a base running drill/game and a slightly sadistic game of catch, were two more we could play with 2+. I also practiced pitching solo via a brick wall.
Add to that the idea of intentionally tanking your season so you can do well in a draft (happens in the NFL too e.g. "Suck for Luck") and I have no idea how people can be interested in the regular seasons of these sports.
I personally only watch regular season basketball, and it's more because I love the sport than any particular game. Probably wouldn't watch if I didn't play fairly seriously once upon a time, however.
1: http://www.sbnation.com/lookit/2015/12/8/9870812/sixers-tick...
I've also had this feeling. What I think should happen (so of course it won't) is for players to only get paid their absurdly high salaries for the games they win. Lose and only get league minimum. This would give players an incentive to play hard each and every game. I'm sure there's a lot wrong with that idea, and I haven't really though it through.
I don't think that sort of salary structure would work quite as readily in the NFL. There's much less guaranteed money, and marginal players are always getting cut. So most on an NFL team do play pretty hard. Also coaching decisions affect football far more than basketball. Suck for Luck is more on management than on the players. How do you disincentivise management from doing that?
And, every so often in the NFL, an Albert Haynesworth comes along and stops playing after getting a lot of guaranteed money. But that's mostly owner stupidity at work. Probably a little of that going on this year with Ndamukong Suh. Certainly a lot lot more of that going on in baseball and basketball with their ridiculously high guaranteed contracts.
Another somewhat related analogy would be that I was never trained in playing any musical instruments; I never am interested in learning how to play one myself. But when I see an orchestra playing a random classical music (i.e. the kind of music I personally find boring), I still appreciate that they are showing off skill that they practiced to acquire for many years.
In both, scoring events are usually rare, which leads casual spectators to think that not much is happening most of the time. Because of the rarity of scoring events, though, it almost always feels like either team can still win. That's actually a huge appeal, and something often underestimated.
The similarities basically end there, but those two pieces are big parts of the appeal of each sport. It's not the case that someone who likes one will also like the other, but it helps people understand a little better.
That having been said, it's hard to sit still for it.
Popularity of the sport may depend on the region though.
While I can enjoy hockey, basketball and even a little bit of football, baseball is just unwatchable. I guess you have to be born in it.
You see other kids playing it, and that's where the fun is - with just about any game.
Growing up, we liked to play fast-paced games like soccer and tag, and games that emphasized skill like baseball, or even bocce.
I cannot remember a game that any of us thought was too boring to play.
And the same decline is happening on Brazil and some European countries (for soccer).
I'd suggest another reason: computer/phone games and internet.
When I was growing up, the grown-ups organized everything and decided who played when, and we had...maybe ten? games in a summer, with a few practice sessions before that. It's been a while, but I have the idea that if you were good enough to be in the lineup regularly, you'd get something like 25 chances to hit a baseball per year. Or wait, I think we had games that were more like seven innings. Maybe 25 was an overestimate.
PS Also, something about the death of the baseball card and how the major league strike of 1994 led a generation to move on.
PPS I remember it being fascinating to learn that teenagers were allowed -- or had the idea it was possible -- or something -- to do something so on their own.
If you've never managed to throw a nice curveball, or hit a homer, or make a great diving catch, you'll never understand.
You do something like that once, and you can easily get hooked on standing in line for another chance to replicate it.
It's kind of like golf, but it sounds like you probably don't like that game either.
Probably related, I am an incredibly impatient person. I absolutely cannot stand to be sitting around "idle" or doing something I perceive to be a waste of time. It even bothers me to be having a conversation with people who take forever to tell a story ("just get to the damn point already, I don't need to hear every little detail!"). Baseball and golf fall into that same category for me. Why would I want to spend three hours watching a game when I could be doing something productive?
On the other hand, I ride my Harley every chance I get (to the tune of almost 10,000 miles this past summer). Many days I don't even have a destination when I leave home. I jump on and just ride. I have many friends I ride with and occasionally we'll ride a few hours together just to have lunch somewhere and turn around and come back. Really, I should consider this just as much of a waste of time but, for whatever reason, I don't see it that way. People who haven't ever rode a bike can't/don't understand the allure of it or why I enjoy it so much.
Different strokes for different folks.
By the way, if you find yourself unable to do anything without a constant reward or threat of death if you stop paying attention, you have ADHD and should see a doctor.
I grew up watching baseball on TV. But it was only after watching my daughter play competitive softball for a number of years did I really begin to understand how much was happening. On every single pitch of every at bat.
It's totally different than "standing around".
http://www.sportsonearth.com/article/64441086/nfl-statistica...
Good quote:
It's curious that few complain about NFL game lengths, considering they take 13 minutes longer, more time than the 11 total minutes of actual game play during an NFL game. In other words, you could fit all the action of an average NFL game into the spare time after an average baseball game ends.
There's still a bunch of time lost to unnecessary commercial breaks and the halftime rigmarole, though.
This came up in a conversation during AYSO soccer game where we were discussing the rising fees associated with the game.
To add to that, aluminum bats are $100+ and kids get to keep their jerseys. When I was young, the league recycled jerseys and had community equipment bags.
Growing up in Australia, the summer was defined by international cricket. Everyone grows up supporting the national team, everyone can watch the game on free TV, and an international summer comprises as little as 5 tests and 8 one-day matches, so it is tractable for kids to watch most of the games. (1990s era fixtures, things are a little different today: less one-day internationals, more 2020, and the BBL, though still on free TV). The lack of constant cricket on TV gives kids time to play it in between watching it.
Contrast with baseball without (1) season-defining international fixtures, (2) a clearly-defined pinnacle of the game, (3) a national team for all kids to get behind. Are those hundreds of MBL fixtures largely hidden on cable TV?
Want to see decline - take a look at US Slow Pitch Softball - http://www.athleticbusiness.com/Recreation/slow-pitch-softba...
...But I do wonder if there may be a reversal of the trend on the horizon as the backlash against football grows.
Reprint of the article there, and commentary on the article on Forbes.
Closed.
(I wish HN would rename the link, as I see these posts several times a day and it's a useful feature).
So enough with the down-votes already - I really just didn't care enough even to click twice more to see what it was about. Telling you that shouldn't be punished, and is absolutely relevant to HN.
My original comment wasn't intended to be a complaint about the pay-wall, nor a claim that it was off-topic, although I can see how it may have been taken as such. Having already spent 10 seconds on something I clicked on just out of curiosity, I wasn't then going to spend another minute or five constructing a mini blog post.
However, I will now write something - I think people don't realise the effects caused by some of the web page interactions I see. But a comment buried in thread on a topic I don't care about is not the place to create any kind of fully reasoned position statement.
Thanks for the link - I'll go read that thread when I have some time.