Do you think baseball has a difficult time engaging with its audience? Is the game too slow or too boring for modern audiences? What do you think?
More info here: https://baseballreplayjournal.substack.com/p/becoming-more-engaging
#baseball #cheerleading #mlb
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It's hard to feel engaged with a group of players who weren't wearing your team's uniform last year, probably won't be wearing it next year, have no interest in or identification with the community in which they play, and are valued only insofar as they stand up to some egghead's conception of what an "efficient" ballplayer should be, rather than for their own unique personalities and skill sets. It's hard to imagine any ballplayer having either the public standing in, or level of commitment to, the town he plays in that he could or would go downtown and climb atop a car and call for calm in the midst of riots, the way Willie Horton did in Detroit in 1967. It's even harder to imagine office workers standing around the water cooler comparing pitchers' Pythagorean Adjusted ERA Plus, or kids pretending to be some second baseman who has a slightly higher WAR than his peers because he doesn't bunt as much or try to steal as many bases. Any sport that deemphasizes the individuals who actually play it to the extent that baseball has will lose its fans quite readily. I'm only surprised that it's taken this long.
There are fewer than 50 balls in play in today's game. There used to be more than 60. 'nuf ced.
My thoughts are more along the lines of "Does this game matter?" It's an American sports issue that just keeps getting worse and worse. The regular season is rendered meaningless thanks to half or more of the teams making it into the playoffs. In the regular season the players barely care other than their personal statistics. I barely care other than my fantasy league teams. If the regular season games meant more there would be way more engagement. Look at Euro Football… they are wild over every regular season game and for good reason. They all matter!
Baseball is a radio sport (and a sim sport) – not a tv sport. I'm interested in baseball from an historical and statistical standpoint – but I don't want to watch anything other than the World Series.
Fantasy baseball keeps what is left of the Baseball audience engaged. If I didn't have Fantasy baseball, I'd be watching my vast DVD collection of older BB games while playing Strat , APBA or Replay BB. cards and dice.
Well, having taken my 8 year old kid to Little League tryouts the other day, I can say based on the huge number of kids there, in a rural Maine Town…..baseball is safe for at least another generation.
Corporations have taken over every aspect of pro sports. Everything is sanitized, blow-dried, and carefully choreographed. I'm still a baseball junkie mostly due to habit after more than 50 years of following, but the game is obviously not the same.
With MLB front office Poindexters stripping all of the excitement out of the game and the NFL now slowly killing tackling, it's time to just fast forward to the obvious end: Rollerball.
for me the game is no longer baseball, its beer league softball. When baseball was about getting on base and putting the ball in play and moving runners, etc….while it could be slow, it was much more exciting. This era of HR-BB-K is awful. Not to mention, is there even "pitchers duels" anymore like we used to look forward to? A SP is only expected to go 6 innings, even if dominating. The CG shutout is totally dead, and the CG in general is going to be as rare as a no-hitter. I wish one team would have the guts to build, field and play as a team in the old mold, but it doesnt seem like anyone is interested or if the players even exist. Im telling you, coming soon to MLB is going to be 30 man rosters so teams can add more pitchers and aluminum bats.
I have said for years, that baseball is a game of skill and patience. If you don't have the patience, you will not see the skill. Baseball requires patience to watch it. Face it, strike 1 isn't that much of a difference from strike 2. Or, ball 1. And, patience is not a quality maintained by the modern sports fan. 1&10 feels a lot different when it's in the red zone instead of back at your own 35.
Do what the networks do – hire a hot girl to do sideline reports.
Like all major sports? Who is going to pay these prices?
I’m not a fan of forced engagement- scoreboards flashing noise etc – my experience is a good game – where the action builds does get engagement- it definitely is lagging behind other sports Bb has same issue I think NFL – soccer don’t
I love the quiet chatter in a ballpark between pitches. It's part of the charm of going to a game. I'd prefer even less exploding scoreboards and blasting music. Some of my best memories are sounds of the crowd murmuring at old Tiger Stadium. The pace and rhythm of baseball is just different. Please never turn the experience of going to a game into a football or nba game..
Some rambling thoughts…
In 1975, for "Game Six" of the World Series (yes, the real "game six," Dan), 76 million viewers tuned in; about 35% of the U.S. population.
But back then there was three networks: ABC, CBS and NBC. There was no CNN, no FOX News, no Netflix, no Facebook, no cellphones and no Internet. People had less entertainment choices.
In the late 1970s, games lasted about two and a half hours. MLB is bragging now that because of the pitch clock, they've got it down to about that. But did that increase the number of balls in play? Back in the '70s and '80s there were far fewer pitching changes. And I don't recall complaints about the need to limit pickoff attempts because it was exciting watching Lou Brock or Davey Lopes or Rickey Henderson try and outfox the pitcher and catcher. That stolen bases are up now is as artificial as the juiced balls and juiced players brought about the so-called breaking of homerun records.
MLB is been trying to gear the game more and more for the TV audience. That's were the big money is, not the gate. Hence the pitch clock and the Zombie runner rule. The broadcasters want something that almost always fits into a nice three hour time slot, not something that that is widely unpredictable.
But to keep interest at the gate late in the season (and on TV), we have an ever increasing number of teams heading to the post-season. It diminishes the importance of the regular season, but the smaller market teams see this as a way to get hot at the right time.
To partly address @graciemcc concern about player movement, I'd propose an exception to the luxury tax for the salary of a player (or two or three) who had played his entire career for that club (i.e. the Mookie Betts situation in Boston after the 2019 season).
It is a huge problem that baseball does not address. The corportization of the sport and the sanitizing of everything that made it spontaneous and fun for so many decades is just not there anymore. Like you showed in the video, the japanese league has team songs like they do with soccer all across the world, they also embrace the bizarre. I remember there a manager who before his first game entered on a actual fucking flying hovercraft, that he was riding through the air from the outfield, it was like eastbound and down when he comes in on horseback. that would never fly in the MLB, but it should because its hilarious.or in 2016 in japan when the monsters from The Grudge and The Ring took the mound to throw the first pitch and it was creepy.
I used to have these tapes of baseball bloopers when i was growing up, i loved them and watched them endlessly, that kind of levity is gone a lot of that kinda extra media stuff is what helped me really love baseball growing up, i was playing the video games, the actual sport, watching funny tapes etc, checking box scores in the paper. its so corporate now and just kinda sucks
One baby race per game would go a long way. Preferably replacing the song during the 7th inning stretch.
I don’t know why mlb doesn’t offer other fun and engaging activities during games. Baseball isn’t always supposed to be edge of your seat exciting at all times. You’re supposed to enjoy just being out there at the game
Nope
I used to watch every Mariners game, from about '92 – '10 I would make a point of watching as often as possible. Sometime around 2010 though baseball started trying to make the game more "exciting" and "fast paced" in an attempt at appealing to younger audiences. The problem imo, was that baseball is not meant to be a game that is consistently exciting for children, it's a slow burn that builds intense drama over long periods of time. It's a game that old men follow and use to teach kids the value of patience and discipline. So what MLB really accomplishes with all these attempts at speeding up the game is to piss in the face of it's most loyal fans while trying to put a square peg in a round hole.
I grew up in the same decades you did, and I thought it was boring then. I would only watch the playoffs. Years later, I would watch the p[layoffs if my team made it. Then later, I would occasionally skip watching the playoffs altogether. Now, I don't watch baseball at all. Not sure why your channel showed up in my feed, lol. But that's my severely limited feedback.
It’s gotten so much better since adding the pitch clock.
my daughter took me to a s.a. missions/n.o. babycakes game one afternoon, i was excited to go see a game as i hadnt been to see one "live" for some time, but by the time the game ended i had been ready to leave by the 5th inning. the term "AMERICAN PASTTIME" SHOULD BE DROPPED SINCE IT HAS NO RESEMBLANCE TO WAT I EXPERIENCED THAT DAY. the amount of noise the ENTIRE GAME completely ruined it for me, the music never stopped (LOUD AND OBNOXIOUS) the "actual " game seemed to have little importance to anyone.i was so dissapointed, ILL NEVER GO BACK.