Make Baseball Great Again
How the U.S. could benefit from a resurgent interest in baseball
This past week baseball has been in the news. The season started on Thursday and there was some controversy as MLB decided to pull the all-star game out of Atlanta. The relative popularity of baseball has been declining for years, with football, basketball, NASCAR and soccer gaining in popularity. This is a shame, as baseball has many lessons for our current cultural and political environment. America would be better off if baseball was the national pastime again...here’s my case.
#1-The things that people dislike about baseball are what make it good for the country. The figure below shows that sometime in the 1960s football passed baseball as the most favored sport to watch in the U.S. A 2018 poll found that only 9% of respondents listed baseball as their favorite sport and attendance declined for the second straight year in 2019. Why don’t people like baseball? The length of games is a common reason. But there are a number of other reasons people seem to dislike baseball; such as the length of the season, the draft isn’t as exciting as drafts in other leagues, too much emphasis on tradition and the game is just boring. There are a number of ways that baseball could make the game more exciting, and as one of the links above suggests, baseball’s inability/unwillingness to embrace social media and YouTube highlights certainly hurts it. But most of the complaints center on a common problem in U.S. culture and politics: the need to be constantly entertained. Baseball is a game with a lot of pauses and a long season. In a culture that needs to be constantly engaged and entertained, baseball loses its popularity.
#2-The common criticisms of baseball should be helpful in thinking about politics. The length of the season, and a game, requires persistence and patience and focus. Too often in politics we move too quickly to the next story. How many people are still focused on the events of January 6th and the hearings held by Congress? Once a bill is passed or an action is taken, we tend to lose interest. Do we know how the first COVID stimulus bill affected the economy? Has anyone asked? We move quickly away from issues only last week to the news stories of this week, such as the Matt Gaetz scandal and the all star game decision. These are important stories but they come at the cost of our attention on other stories. (It’s like that Simpsons episode where Homer forgets something every time he learns something new). The baseball season is 162 games long. It requires persistence to play and to follow. A game is long; it requires patience and focus to enjoy. Baseball is also full of failure. It is a cliché to say but in baseball you are succeeding when you fail in only 7 out of 10 at bats. In politics we are too often tricked or too often trick ourselves into believing that our side is going to win every political battle, every election, every Congressional vote. If our side loses then the country will fall. The conservative Claremont Institute published a story last week arguing that conservatism isn’t enough anymore and true “Americans” need to prepare for the counter-revolution. What baseball teaches us, at the individual and team level, is that sometimes we win and sometimes we lose. Regardless, there’s always a chance tomorrow to improve and to win. This is the bedrock of democracy. You may lose the election but you know that in two, four, five years, there will be another election that you may win. If that perspective is lost then democracy is lost.
#3-There are a lot of pauses and “dead air” in baseball but that only provides needed time for reflection. The pauses are followed by small, intense moments of action. The pitcher throws a 90 plus mile per hour fastball and the batter has about .25 seconds to decide to swing or not (or to get out of the way). If the batter hits it, the exit velocity of the ball leaving the bat can be as high as 120 miles per hour, leaving fielders with little time to react. The reflections during the pauses are what allows for success in the intense moments of action. The pitcher, batter and fielders prepare themselves mentally for the situation, what pitch will be thrown, where the batter will likely hit the ball and so on. I linked to Neil Postman’s Amusing Ourselves to Death above and in that book he talks about the lack of time for reflection in the U.S. He refers to this as the “now this” problem, as when a news program discusses something tragic and then transitions to a lighthearted story. The viewer has no time to reflect on and process the tragic news but is immediately forced to engage with the new news story. We experience one political crisis or scandal after another without time to reflect on what just happened and determine a proper way to respond. This leads to shallow and quick actions that are not grounded in well thought out and committed reflection. Politics needs more pauses and “dead air”, so we can reflect on what has happened and what will happen to be better prepared to meet the intense moments of action that will surely come.
#4-Baseball has an excellent mix of individuality and unity. All basketball and football fields have the same dimensions. They may have small differences, such as noise levels or shooting backdrops but they are mandated by the rules of the game to have the same dimensions. Baseball stadiums are all unique. They have different dimensions in the outfield, some have more foul territory and they have unique features, such as the green monster in Fenway. Batters all have different batting stances, so different that the hitter can often be identified simply by the stance. Pitchers all have different wind ups, some as crazy as Luis Tiant. However, in each stadium the bases are all 90 feet apart and the mound is 60 feet, 6 inches from home plate. Regardless of the stance or wind up, the goal of the batter and pitcher are still the same. The core rules and goals of the game are the same and are strong enough to allow for expressions of individuality and ingenuity. In the U.S. we either want everyone to be the same or for everyone’s individual rights to be supreme. The e pluribus unum motto seems to have lost its meaning. We can be different politically and have different local policies but still be committed to the core values of American democracy.
#5-The demographics of baseball are the future of America. As the figure below shows, the share of Latino and Asian players has increased in baseball over the years. This is true of the U.S. as well moving forward, as the second figure demonstrates. Perhaps baseball can provide lessons about how the benefits and challenges that go along with these changing demographics, as it did when baseball was desegregated.
Baseball has always been my favorite sport, so perhaps I’m biased, but based on the evidence it sure seems like the U.S. would be better off with a reemergence of baseball as the national pastime. Our culture and politics suffer from a lack of focus and time for reflection. Each political battle is viewed as the last one, with failure not an option. And either the rights of individuals or the homogeneity of the community is emphasized too much. The decline in baseball is likely due to the changes in our culture that Postman discusses in his book...the need to be entertained and gratified immediately. Baseball requires pensiveness, patience, perspective and perseverance...all things our political culture could benefit from.
Campaign Ads
This week’s campaign (my campaign to convince people of the greatness of Ozzie Smith) ad is merely a highlight reel of the greatest shortstop to play the game; Ozzie Smith. As a young kid I wanted nothing more than to be the shortstop for the St. Louis Cardinals. Alas, the fates conspired against me but watching these highlights can help you understand why just about every Cardinals fan in the 1980s wanted to be the “Wizard”. (He also gave a great hall of fame speech).