Culture Sorry Fans, Baseball is Not a Sport We wanted to wait until baseball season was in the rearview mirror before publishing this article in an attempt to minimize the blow-back. BY Melissa Webber Dec. Baseball is not a sport. Keywords: Baseball is not a sport. Top Articles. How to Fact-Check Fake News.
View Fewer View More. Write a comment Please sign up to continue! Confirm Password:. Please sign in to continue! Login Close. Did someone pay you to wright this? Kjuhhj SEP. You're an idiot. B aseball is no longer The National Pastime. Of this, there can be no doubt. Salaries must come down, or the interest of the public must be increased in some way.
If one or the other does not happen, bankruptcy stares every team in the face. A Hall of Famer who has been noted as particularly financially-savvy made this perfectly clear when he said. A respected journalist identified this trend when he wrote that baseball. Baseball has an age problem too.
A former big league pitcher noted this trend, saying that while the best players are as good today as they used to be. I remember when we ate, slept and lived baseball. Such big problems identified by such knowledgable authorities has to worry the men and women who work for Major League Baseball and upon whose efforts the very future of the game depends.
The first professional baseball team began play in the spring of People began lamenting its demise approximately fifteen minutes later. We see these obituaries every year. Often several times a year. Columns written in major newspapers and soliloquies offered by TV or talk radio hosts about how baseball is no longer vital , popular or important.
Arguments — some of them quite dumb — about how baseball is boring and anachronistic and broken and corrupt and unfair. People began lamenting its demise approximately 15 minutes later. A terminal case of high salaries brought on by an aggressive and invasive strain of player greed. Most often, however, the obituary describes a sudden, violent death at the hands of a much stronger and vital adversary in the form of the National Football League and its enormous television ratings and cultural cachet.
Maybe, while fewer kids and especially fewer U. Both teams were pretty awful that year, with the Jags finishing and the Titans finishing Topped it by quite a margin, actually. Though this is not a terribly uncommon occurrence, much was made of it at the time. Much is made of it each year when a regular season NFL game beats a baseball playoff game in the ratings. The numbers are what they are, of course. Nothing does as well as football does in the ratings.
Not the most popular entertainment shows. Not news shows. Not even Presidential debates. Baseball does quite well, however, when one considers the overall television ratings trends.
Indeed, baseball is almost exclusively compared with the anomalous NFL — or, more often, its own history — as opposed to current television programming and the inexorable fragmentation of the TV viewing audience.
It averaged a Nielsen rating of between 10 and 11 and a share of around The primary purpose of TV ratings is to determine advertising rates and to guide the business decisions of networks. For this purpose historical comparisons are pointless. Cable had barely made any inroads. Viewers today have hundreds of competing entertainment options and, as such, success is measured differently than it was measured 30 or 40 years ago. Baseball, however, is presumed to be competing against old ghosts like the World Series.
Indeed, in terms of total viewers, The World Series typically delivers to Fox the same number of eyeballs an entire season of a top 10 entertainment program delivers.
And it does so over the course of one week. Sure, if the Giants are playing most people are watching them, but say the Giants are playing the Sunday night game. Are the TVs turned off? Of course not. Everyone is watching football, no matter where the games are being played. Twice if you count Monday night. Now, walk into a sports bar in New York on a Tuesday evening in July. Are there a half dozen TVs watching a half dozen east coast baseball games?
Everyone is watching the Yankees. Not that many people will be there for the 10pm west coast game, anyway. They have to work tomorrow morning. After dinner but before a reasonable bed time. How can it be a party anyway? There are five or six of these games on a week and people have to pace themselves. Also, the MLB draft is a million rounds long, and by the end of it, teams are picking players as favors to friends. Don't you hate how the Raiders field is 10 yards longer and five yards wider than the Niners field?
Oh, never mind, they're the exact same dimensions. Same with basketball and hockey. But for some reason, baseball fields feel like they can make up their own damn rules. So we get fields like Minute Maid Park that slope up and have a pole in the field of play and Fenway Park, whose dimensions indicate whoever designed the outfield fence was drunk. It's like if Norman Dale went to go measure the hoop in Hoosiers and was like "how far to the free-throw line?
Hmm, ours is only Sorry guys, everything is different here. We're screwed. Baseball happens basically all year long—is there really a need to count down during that wonderfully brief period of time when there isn't any baseball? I'm not anti-statistics, so please put back your torches and pitchforks. I'll admit that the old codgers of the baseball world who act like advanced statistics are a newfangled bunch of poppycock are the worst. It's great that we can measure the game in new and interesting ways.
But do you have to be so smug about it all? The moment anybody complains about advanced statistics, you all sound that stat signal and converge upon whatever poor soul said he thought Miguel Cabrera should have won MVP over Mike Trout. I get that things like VORP are great, but it'd be even greater if you could stop beating us over the head with it. Will everybody shut up about these teams already?
Especially now that they're both going to suck this year. Even ignoring how incredibly stupid it is that the National and American Leagues have different rules for the same sport, the designated hitter rule is terrible. I'm sure the Jets would be on board with that. And maybe the NBA should allow one player to be on offense all the time and another player to handle the defense, just not crossing the half-court line.
Antoine Walker would have loved that. Its a spectator sport where people pay a stupid amount of money to see fat people barely hit a ball and run occasionally. Its what you do when you have nothing else to do. Its just for idiots that want to buy expensive peanuts and beer. I think that it isn't a sport because it's basically like playing throw and catch but you have a bat and its like you didn't catch it so you run and get it.
I am actually in grade six but I have big opions that I will always state so yeah. Baseball is the only game where you can stand nine innings and possibly not have a ball hit to you the entire game. In addition you only bat once every nine players. You have the potential to stand an entire game and not see any action of any sort which is why they can play multiple games on one day. I said so. You can't deny that many baseball players are athletes and that the individual skills are considerable.
However, without constant play movment of the ball , real cardiovascular demands, and teamwork over individual accomplishments it doesn't measure up to any other team sport short of, yawn, cricket. Crack open the dictionary and defend your case if you must, but if you have to quote strict definitions, you've already lost the argument.
Kind of like a movie, but most people pay unfailing attention to the movie. If for some point the US Supreme Court ever takes up this question, and somehow determines that Baseball is a Sport, then the dissenting opinion will certainly note that it is the most booooooooring sport ever next to cricket.
By using this site, you agree to our Privacy Policy and our Terms of Use. Google Search. Post Your Opinion. Create New Poll. Sign In Sign Up. Add a New Topic. Is baseball considered a sport? Baseball , Shopping , History , Texas , Sports. Baseball just is The furthest someone has every run in football is like yards, Baseball base paths are 30 yards, People have hit inside the park homeruns and sprinted around the bases at yards, Which is more than the football players, The only difference is that football players have heavy pads, But still baseball players run, And play the whole game like days a week.
Like Reply. Maximum words. Report Post. Posted by: rockstarcrossing Report Post. Like Reply Challenge. Not a sport If you can play it with a big golden chain, It's not a sport. Load More Arguments. Comments 0.
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