Baseball is for Insomniacs

Via the Wall Street Journal we learn baseball has a massive youth issue:

The ball fields at Delano-Hitch Park were covered in snow when Jim Wilson launched a campaign to keep them in use. As president of the City of Newburgh Little League, he had seen participation numbers plummet to the point where the league was in danger of folding. Now, he and the league’s board of directors were calling parents one by one, asking if their children would play this spring.

I see no indication that anyone in this article really appreciates the problem.

The last time a world series game began before right was 1987, Twins v Cardinals. I remember it well. Since then all the games have been at night. During the epic 2001 Yankees-Diamondback series first pitch was at 8:37. You wanna know why Derek Jeter is Mr. November? Because he hit the homerun at 12:01 AM.

How many eight year olds were awake to see the homer, live, in real time?

Baseball in the age of Bud, as Phil Mushnik likes to say.

Baseball isn't the National Past Time and hasn't been in two generations.

Now, wanna know why the NFL is the most popular sport in America? Super Bowl kickoff is usually somewhere around 6:30. The game will be 3-3:00 tops and that's with an extended halftime. An eight year old can persuade mom to let him stay up till ten to see the game through.

Baseball sure had made a lot of money the last 20 years. But its small and more insular. It’s a bigger version of the NHL.

Bud Selig sold baseball's soul for prime time TV dollars. Now the game lacks younger viewers. Hope it was worth it.