The bottom line is the public does not care about baseball as much as they do with other sports in this country. And some pie in the sky fantasy about some movie and what some player there is no film on is not going to change that. That is why there is more successful programming with the NFL and the NBA than there is currently with MLB. Maybe that will change one day, but not today. For the record, the NBA plays fewer games and their season is much longer from start to finish in months, and they get decent ratings for summer league ball. Let it go, baseball is not as relevant as it once was. I can accept it, you can too.

Peace

Excuse me but your facts are wrong.


Baseball beats the NBA in regular season ratings.
And Baseball KILLED the NBA in post season last year.
BASEBALL 11 rating for the World Series
NBA 6.5 for the Finals.

You can, as they say, look it up.

Randy:

I laugh to myself in amusement, or shake my head in bewilderment at the irony every time somebody demands the channel be changed to football or basketball because “baseball is boring”. All three have allure, but the former two are gaining more. The trend mirrors the general dumbing down of American society. Baseball will continue to lose popularity because the masses have too short an attention span to pay sufficient attention to the subtlety of baseball to ever gain an understanding sufficient to develop an appreciation of it

Basketball and football are hip-hop, slam dancing and graffiti, the dime novel. They are power and speed, the awe what is possible by the physically extraordinary among us.

Baseball is the symphony, ballet and sculpture, poetry. It is finesse, the awe of what is possible by the physically ordinary among us.

In football, two-way play is unusual. In basketball, it’s optional. In baseball, it’s (generally) required. It takes two extraordinarily different skill sets to play offense and defense. You can spend ten years in the minors developing and still get a crack at the bigs. The others write you off if you haven’t made it by age 25. Make that 21 in basketball. Baseball doesn’t require stamina for a game, but it does for a season.

Football and basketball allow you to redeem your failures on the next snap, or the next trip down the court. In baseball, you have to wait two or three innings for your shot at atonement. In baseball, a 35% success rate gets you to Cooperstown; in the others, a 40% success rate gets you an unemployment check.

Baseball doesn’t allow a clock to run out your chance to come back. There is no taking a knee in baseball. There is no partial credit. There are no field goal attempts if you are stranded at third, no free throws if a hard knock keeps you from crossing the plate. It’s one run at a time, and that’s the only way to win.

Rut is right—appreciation of baseball is dying. A pity, but given a “culture” that demands instant gratification and eschews lifetime achievement for fifteen minutes of fame, what else would you expect?

Baseball is Augustus; football and basketball are Nero.

I was referring to head to head comparisons. And unless you have some facts that showed that any national broadcast the NBA was outdone by some national broadcast, I stand by everything I said.

But for some reason if you reference participation numbers, those cannot be accepted even thought I bet most schools that offer a basketball program, offer a baseball program. I bet someone will claim that is not accurate either without any numbers to back that up. ;)

Peace

Baseball beat the NBA in numbers for games of the week,

Impressive since the TV viewership for Saturday afternoon games in the summer is much lower than for Sunday afternoon games in the Winter for NBA.

Wouldn't you agree?

I personally do not know and personally do not care. I am just wondering when I am going to get another lecture about why baseball is so much better than every other sport. I am sure NBC, CBS and ABC are going out of their way to get that MLB contract for prime-time viewing. Oh, I forgot, they did not care to. ;)

Peace

Very well put. Good post!

Because I said so.
Guess that about ties that up! :D

JJ

I agree with SD Steve (again... how irritating!), Publius' post goes to the salient points. Americans' attention spans, averaging the duration of a lit match, are not up to the task of appreciating baseball's subtleties. And the netjerks don't help the situation; coverage consists largely of closeups of players' zits and little kids covering themselves with cotton candy. Seldom if ever do you see a wide shot between pitches (or during a live ball), showing the minor adjustments in fielding positions that reflect the chess game. I love being at the park and seeing, for instance, a shift toward right field against a right handed batter, convincing the batter that they're going to pitch him away, then a last second adjustment to straight away as the front-door slider freezes him on the inside. That stuff goes on constantly, but someone who considers him/herself a better judge of what "we" want has decided that it's too much brain damage for yer average viewer. I'd like to see interactive coverage where the viewer gets to choose the camera (s)he's watching.

Publius - hat's off. Excellent post.

Be careful, you'll get a bad reputation!:)

That would make Garth Caligula? :D

1578 views and 88 replies....

No wonder BrianCurtain removed his post.

And since, through all of that, no one answered your question....

The point of playing a baseball game in the rain is to score more runs than your opponents.

JM

LOL

That would be the point of any game where runs, goals, and points are interchangeable terms reflecting scores.

Playing a baseball game in the rain in post season indicates a complete lack of leadership in MLB.

Pretty sad.