"Baseball's Philadelphia
Phillies' attendance is down 8,290 per home game from a year ago.
Toronto Blue Jays and Texas Rangers, each down more than 4,000.
Minnesota Twins, more than 3,000. Detroit Tigers, Washington Nationals,
Atlanta Braves, Arizona Diamondbacks, Chicago White Sox, 2,000-plus.
Baltimore Orioles,
Chicago Cubs, Cincinnati Reds, Cleveland Indians, Colorado Rockies, New
York Mets, San Diego Padres, Tampa Bay Rays .... down, down, down, down,
down, down, down, down."
He also concludes that Baseball is losing its
luster. As ticket prices get higher, interest goes lower. he writes. As options on
television expand, baseball's grip on the American public gets ever more
slippery. He cites that for Game 1
of the 2004 World Series between the Boston Red Sox and St. Louis
Cardinals came to approximately 25.4 million viewers. When the same two
teams met in the World Series last October, Game 1's viewership was
pegged at around 15 million.
One year earlier a
series between the San Francisco Giants and Detroit Tigers attracted the
worst TV ratings of any World Series in the past 30 years.
As great players like Derek Jeter retire, there are new baseball starts like Miguel Cabrera, Andrew McCutchen,
Robinson Cano, Clayton Kershaw, Mike Trout, Jose Abreu, Yu Darvish, and Yasiel Puig. But do these new players have the lasting draw of the old ones?
Apparently not, if one sees both attendance and television ratings falling in a majority of major league teams. I agree with some of Downey's assumptions. But there is a larger picture.
Historically, baseball has been a mirror to the American population growth. At the turn of the 20th century, it was played by white men and an influx of new immigrants. As each immigrant type, whether it be Jewish, Irish, Polish, etc., came to the United States in numbers, those groups would become Americanized and take up baseball. Each new group contributed to the baseball rosters. When Jackie Robinson broke the color barrier, black players made their contributions to the sport. Likewise, the current wave of Hispanic/Latin immigration has fueled the increase in Hispanic/Latin players in the majors.
So why are the influx of new talent and new immigrants not kept baseball moving forward in attendance and ratings? Economics and culture may play a part. The current wave of new immigrants are mostly semi-skilled laborers who do not have the disposal income to take a family to the major league game. It is too expensive. In addition, they come from countries where baseball is not the number one sport - - - soccer is the national game. Also, cultural in the 21st century, there has been a movement NOT to assimilate new immigrants into the American culture. Politics has made it possible to keep your own language and culture as a "special interest" group than become part of the silent majority.
Finally, there are vast more entertainment choices today than 50 years ago. Baseball would have been a priority summer event several generations ago. But today, organized sports for kids and the electronic babysitting age has fractured demographics into small diverse sub-culture groups with smaller attention spans.
Baseball may not fit the needs of the next generation.
