Baseball should be compared against itself, then, and by that measure it’s doing just fine.

Did I use that word correctly, in HBT-approved context? I wonder. Fairly snarky bunch around here when it comes to narratives.

Rock on, CC! \m/

STGD

Over the past few decades, ESPN has grown into the antithesis of this “glue”. While catering to an ever shrinking attention span, ESPN chose to focus on the lowest hanging fruit and maximize viewership returns. They focused on those things of importance to their New England staff: Yankees and Red Sox with some smattering of Mets and Phillies. All the entire rest of the baseball universe was reduced to a couple of dozen names, which kind of rotated every 5 years or so. As ESPN grew and dominated the information exchange, the stories of distant players and teams evaporated from the awareness of the typical fan, and from the common dialog between us.

So when two teams end up on the largest stage of the sport, the World Series, and those teams are not one of the ESPN money trees, most fans have no connection with the players and the stories. Why watch strangers? Just so we can suffer Joe Buck and Tim McCarver? The Giants have won 2 of the last 3 WS. Who can name their starting rotation? But God forbid we miss out on yet another Joba Chamberlain experiment, or yet another thing Bobby Valentine did NOT manage to do.

Baseball is a long season, with long periods of time where it dominates the sports stage. If FOX and ESPN and MLB want to improve ratings on October, they need to do a better job of connecting us to the stories on ALL the teams beginning back in May and June. Only then can we, once again, follow along and trace these stories all the way to the final two, where we can watch with real interest.

There are more places than we can all count that have the latest MLB transactions and stats.

When you do actually write about a baseball article, usually it’s to claim that the author is ignorant for one reason or another. I still read the posts because sports news is a way for me to disconnect from more serious aspects of life, but when I see CC at the top of the post it’s a bit disappointing because i know theres a 50% chance that the content will be substance free.

But hey, you’ve found your formula. Be controversial. Write stupid things. A lot of people won’t like you, but they will be compelled to read your stories and post comments (like me right now for instance).

If he doesn’t want to then it’s not a big deal… Just a thought. That’s what comments are for right bud?

In this article you make the case that some people think baseball is dying, when in reality if you discuss the game on an international level (especially the WBC with emerging baseball nations involved), it would show how much the game is growing internationally. It’s not just about focusing on America, the game is starting to grow globally at a fast rate and the WBC can showcase the talent that some of these lesser known baseball nations have to offer.

Why wouldn’t you write about international baseball as a follow up to an article in which you say how some people think the game is dying? Wouldn’t that show how the popularity of baseball is growing worldwide?

The only way to make that kind of argument is to be completely ignorant of the fact.

I don’t think it is baseball fans that are in a bubble. Rather, it is the people that are divorced from baseball that have to stay in their bubble to come up with any argument that baseball is not doing well from economic or popularity perspectives….because just a glance at the landscape of baseball would indicate to anyone that baseball is doing quite well.