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The decline of interest in baseball is a harbinger of waning American power
Long considered the country’s “national pastime”, baseball reflects the very best qualities of the American spirit, the higher values upon which our society was (theoretically, at least) founded: freedom, independence,
Owners fought tooth and nail to prevent the abolition of the reserve clause, which not only gave them unfettered contract rights for the entirety of a player's career and permitted organizations paying as little as they wished no matter how much said player produced. Even after Curt Flood's martyrdom paved the way for free agency, there have since been further restrictions on players' rights to select their own teams, including the amateur draft, qualifying offer, and the continued push for an international draft. Other than that, let freedom ring!
tolerance.
Just don't check roster composition before 1947. Nothing to see here.
Football is a violent, territorial sport that rewards brute strength over everything else
Activities that involve tackling tend to be violent, although it's interesting that this is a stylistic point when nothing was mentioned about how baseball is played. As for being "territorial," baseball centers around preventing batters and runners from reaching "bases" safely. But that's totally different!
and symbolises, at its base level, imperialism, bloodlust,
Ooh, someone's trying to impresses his freshman English professor.
and corporate capitalism’s tendency to flatten any and all eccentricity into bland, cog-in-the-machine homogeny.
This is straight out of the Chuck Klosterman school of throwing a bunch of pseudo-high-concept theories together in hopes of convincing idiots of profundity. Curse you, NFL, for making all teams the same! Say, did a team based around running the football and playing smashmouth defense just face off in the Super Bowl against squad built on speed and precision passing, or was it an epic matchup of John Jackson vs. Jack Johnson? The capitalists have made it impossible to tell.
Sadly, it’s more than clear at this point that Americans don’t much like baseball anymore, at least compared to how much we like football.
Those are two entirely different points, which is clearly why Bry hedged in such massive fashion. As Craig Calcaterra has pointed out at great length, attendance is rising, revenues have spiked, salaries continue to increase, and, despite the sturm und drang about television ratings, teams continue to rake in record profits with new local deals. Man, R.I.P., baseball.
This is a deep – and worsening – flaw in our collective character, as telling a sign of American decline as our terrible math skills, our tragic and preventable high infant mortality rate or the depreciation of our GDP vis-a-vis China.
I love baseball as much as anyone, but one of these things is not like the others. In any way. Unless you want to blame horrible politicians and anti-vaccine crazies for the depreciation in interest for baseball which...would be pretty amusing, actually. Also, you'd think that a writer for British-based website would be higher on the usage of the Oxford comma, but I guess that's just another sign of our failing educational system.
Through its first five games, this year’s World Series has been an excellent one by almost all accounts: it marks the Kansas City Royals’ first trip to the postseason in 29 years and pits them against a burgeoning dynasty in the San Francisco Giants, who have won two championships in four years. It’s been beautifully played, closely contested and very exciting.
Agreed. Definitely a great showcase for the game and one that's piqued the interest in many, including the awakening of a rabid fan base in Kansas City. I'm so encouraged by this line of reasoning that I won't get into the liberal use of the word "dynasty" to describe a Giants team that went a combined 162-162 without a playoff appearance in its two non-WS campaigns during this stretch.
Nonetheless, 7.2 million more people watched a regular season football game between the New Orleans Saints and the Green Bay Packers, according to Variety, than watched Madison Bumgarner pitch the Giants to victory in Sunday night’s game five.
And then you go and throw away that goodwill, Dave. Fun fact: NFL games, especially stand-alone primetime contests on network TV, have been massively outrating baseball games for decades now. Even despite this fact, FOX still drew 12.6 million viewers for a one-sided game, especially notable, again, given that KC/SF is not even close to being a matchup that would normally garner major attention from casual fans.
Baseball is the most individualist of our major team sports: 9 solitary players, spread across a two-and-a-half-acre field, each charged with doing his own job by himself.
Just like America's national slogan: "Screw that guy, I'm getting mine!"
Especially in its central competition – pitcher vs. hitter, facing off at just over 60 feet [18m],
60 feet, 6 inches, superfan. Pfft, there's that American math ineptitude in action.
it mirrors the drama and heroism of a gunslinger’s duel at high noon.
Wait, wasn't football supposed to be the sport centered around violent imagery?
The outcome of every pitch of every game – a hundred one-on-one micro-battles of wit, timing and accuracy – is determined as much by savvy and feint of hand as it is by speed and strength.
So true. Only in baseball can you see players of various sizes and abilities compete on the same field,
use different techniques,
and succeed with cleverness.
Think of the submarine relief pitcher, scraping his knuckles on the mound as he throws a deceptive sinker. Or the knuckleballer, floating butterfly pitches at a tantalising 6omph. Or the backhanded, inside-out swing of a placement hitter, slicing a soft line drive just out of an infielder’s reach. Baseball is a complicated, quirky endeavour that rewards kooks who do things their own way.
Nothing proves a rule like a handful of exceptions, am I right?
My least favourite thing about football (well, at least until recently, when medical research has proven that its gladiatorial and criminalising are beyond my moral comfort zone)
Breaking "medical" news: Beating your child is bad for moral integrity.
has always been that the players wear helmets that cover their faces.
That's it? That's your #1 peeve? The way that a player's visage looks on television? If I didn't already hate you, I'd offer to give you another crack at providing a better gripe. Also, unless something has gone horribly, horribly wrong, it's the facemasks, not the helmets, that partially obscure the face. This mistake is excusable due to the American education system's decline in direct proportion to baseball viewership and Chinese import ratess, though.
One of the great joys of sports spectatorship comes in facial expressions – a pitcher’s scowl melting into a grimace after giving up a home run, the batter’s face lighting up with joy and pride. It offers a fascinating window into human psychology, and allows for easier emotional connection with the otherwise meaningless games that we project our workaday hopes and fears and anger and miseries onto. (Sports are essentially escapist, right? Why else would we watch?)
Apparently you don't actually watch much baseball or else you'd be aware that one of the biggest complaints has always been that networks zoom in way too close, especially in this age of HD TV.
Faceless in their masks, indistinguishable beneath their armour, often piled ajumble in a scrum, football players don’t let us see what they’re feeling on the field. They’re stonier, scarier – more Stormtrooper than human.
I think that we've come to the key point here - Dave has never actually seen a football game. I can't think of any other reason why someone would be under the impression that during the entire contest, the field of play looks like South Park's group orgy to destroy the future. Makes one wonder how something like the Manning Face meme came to be if we never get to see players react. What a paradox!
This facelessness of football falls in line with its overall ethos. Far more team-oriented in its play, the sport is based on the subjugation of the self to a collective effort.
I'm trying to think if this could possibly be any funnier, but am coming up short. Seriously, tune into any sporting event and you will be far more likely to see a football player shilling something on TV. Per opendorse.com, five NFL players (both Mannings, Brady, Brees, and Rodgers) ranked among the Top 50 in worldwide endorsement earnings as compared to only two baseball players - Derek Jeter and Ichiro Suzuki (whose value is concentrated in Japan). There's a reason why Jeter's retirement tour was deemed the last occurrence of a true baseball superstar, as the sport can barely make its best player, Mike Trout, visible on the national stage. Meanwhile, even supposed goons like Clay Matthews and J.J. Watt are all over the television. While the games are very different, one sport is far better at making its faces seen. (Hint: it's not baseball!)
A group of men pushing in a single direction, directing all their will and power towards a shared goal: moving a ball over a line. The all-for-one-and-one-for-all aspect of the game buffers the militaristic metaphors so often employed to describe it.
Remember when football was bad due to its "capitalist" ways? Apparently it's also socialist. Who knew?
The quarterback is a “field general”, the linemen are “soldiers in the trenches”.
And you said that a pitcher was a "gunslinger" engaged in a "duel." This isn't a very long article, why can't you remember that what you wrote earlier contradicts many of your points?
How many wars has America fought over the past 50 years?
I don't know the answer, as I attended public school in America.
How many of them still rage on in one form or another? How many quagmires do we find ourselves stuck in? Pax Americana? “Peace through superior fire power?” How much harm have these lies done in the world? How much harm have they done to us?
How many times can one person ask the same rhetorical question? Is it normal to bleed from the eyes? Why is no one linking the decline in sacrifice bunting to the increase in school shootings?
Might makes right in this ugly worldview, as it does in football.
Because tackling ballcarriers is part of the rules. If you do not like that, please feel free to stick to not understanding anything about baseball.
Watch a group of defenders tackle a running back at the line of scrimmage. The swarming, the pile-on – do we have a better metaphor for the “tyranny of majority”, the great danger De Tocqueville warned us of way back in 1835?
Anything that even is even remotely linked to the societal ills about which de Tocqueville described, as opposed to a game? Does that count?
Individual expression, steamrolled by a horde.
A horde made up of individuals who, like said ballcarrier, are delivering their own expression in the form of tackling the offensive players. I suppose that Patrick Willis should instead gaze in amazement at the artistry of DeMarco Murray's attempts to cut through the line, then clap in admiration as the RB sprints to the end zone?
An America that worships football and ignores baseball is one choosing its worse angels over its better ones.
Oh, get screwed.
It is – we are – a dumb, floundering nation.
Do we have a better metaphor for the embodiment of our “dumb, floundering nation" than this article by Dave Bry?
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