This may be the week baseball died.
It isn't even baseball season. Pitchers and catchers haven't reported. The hopes of springtime are two months away, maybe more. But baseball may have died nonetheless over last weekend.
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(3) comments
Baseball will survive. The history of baseball has always included the conflict of greedy owners from Connie Mack,Charles Comiskey to George Steinbrenner versus players. Prima donnas have always been around from Babe Ruth to Bryce Harper. And scandal has rocked baseball from the 1919 Black Sox to Pete Rose to PEDs. That being said, it is rare to see a group of kids play a sandlot game; adult controlled sports dominate on the youth level. Kids are asked to specialize at an early age and play a single sport year round.
I love your optimism, but the stats don't support it.
Attendance is down (pre-pandemic), and youth participation [Little League] has been declining steadily since the 1990's.
Without a new generation to care, it will fade into memory.
1972 marked the beginning of the death of MLB and it's been on the slow decline ever since.
Between the primadonna players, the greedy owners, and corporate sponsors the game has lost all of its "Magic".
The cable sports channels and politicizing of professional sports, in general, has pretty much pushed it onto life-support.
Like so many beloved traditions, the Great American Pastime will probably not survive the Culture War or Technology and fade into obscurity by the next generation.
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