Even though baseball will still always be referred to as "America's Pastime," anyone with any kind of sense of reality knows that in 2015, that is simply not the case. If you don't believe me, I have the data to prove it, and the data is overwhelmingly convincing.
October is what baseball purists love. Parity has (for the most part) started to seep through baseball, and we have seen all kinds of new faces and teams play into October. While we are used to seeing the St. Louis Cardinals, New York Yankees, and San Francisco Giants in the playoffs, the rest of the field has been filled with all sorts of newcomers in recent years, and 2015 is no different. Who would have ever thought in April that we would see the Cubs, Astros, Mets, and Blue Jays all in the postseason in the same year? Nobody. And at the same time, the Kansas City Royals entered the postseason as a team with World Series experience and expectations to be back right there again. 2015 has seen a youth explosion in Major League Baseball, and this is the stage for that youth movement to take full stage on a national level. The only problem is, that isn't happening.
Yesterday was an amazingly great day of baseball. All of the eight remaining teams played, and we were treated to some unbelievable games. The Blue Jays staved off elimination against the Rangers, and that series is going to a decisive fifth game in Toronto in a series which has seen the road team win every game. The Royals climbed off of their death bed in Houston with an amazing rally to force a decisive fifth game back in Kansas City, and they now have the momentum in a series that the Astros were six outs away from winning.
In the National League, we saw Jake Arrieta, in the midst of one of the greatest stretches of individual pitching in baseball history, face off against Michael Wacha in what would seemingly be a pitchers' duel at Wrigley Field, and the ball was flying all over the ballpark as the Cubs have now given themselves a chance to move to the NLCS with a win in Game Four at home tonight. Then to finish the day off, the Mets continued their improbable run, and they too have a chance to reach the NLCS with a win at home tonight. It was a great day for baseball. But then, Monday Night Football happened, and reality sunk back in.
The Pittsburgh Steelers took on the San Diego Chargers last night. While those are two intriguing teams in many ways, Pittsburgh vs San Diego isn't exactly the prototypical primetime, edge of your seat type of matchup, even though the game did have a thrilling finish (as well as a serious game clock issue that no one is talking about). The two National League games drew an average rating of 3.5 nationwide, with the ratings obviously being higher in Chicago, St. Louis, New York, and Los Angeles. The Monday Night Football game drew an 8.5 national TV rating. So, not only is the nation more interested in a Week 5 matchup of not so epic proportions than primetime playoff baseball, but the race isn't even close. Why is this happening? There are so many good things going on in baseball right now, but it still just cannot come close to touching the NFL. I don't know if I have all of the answers as to why this is, but spending my morning off watching sports television certainly gave me some insight as to what the problem is that Major League Baseball continually fails to address.
Think of all of the young talent that is now shining on baseball's biggest stage. The Cubs have a seemingly endless supply of young, powerful, and exciting position players. The Mets have an embarrassment of young pitching depth. The Astros have an entire roster full of kids who seemingly could still attend a high school prom and not stand out as a bit too old to be there. The Royals have a team full of young stars, and they are actually a seasoned group of experienced veterans in comparison to these other teams. Major League Baseball should be taking this opportunity to showcase its youth and vitality and running with it, but that just is not happening. It is no fault of the players, as they are most certainly doing their part. The fault lies right at the feet of the commissioner, the owners, and the executives in the MLB offices.
When Rob Manfred took over as MLB Commissioner, he had an opportunity to put his stamp on the game of baseball. I don't mean adding instant replay or adding interviews with managers in the dugouts during games. I mean that he had (and still does have) a chance to market the game like it needs to be marketed. As I watched TV for a few hours this morning, I saw Andrew Luck in a commercial for DirecTV. I saw Peyton and Eli Manning. I saw J.J. Watt. I even saw Richard Sherman and Cam Newton marketing beef jerky and yogurt. Beef jerky and yogurt! Take a moment to think about that. These NFL players aren't marketing rough and tough products, they are doing ads for beef jerky and yogurt. In that same span of time, do you know how many baseball players I saw in those dozens and dozens of commercials? The answer is zero, and this is what MLB somehow just doesn't seem to understand.
The list of young and budding superstars in the MLB postseason right now seemingly reads like an encyclopedia. Carlos Correa, Kris Bryant, Jacod deGrom, Addison Russell, Lorenzo Cain. Kevin Pillar is a human highlight film in center field for Toronto. Noah Syndergaard and Matt Harvey are absolutely dominant young arms for the Mets. Eric Hosmer and Salvador Perez are elite talents in Kansas City. And then there are dozens of players who aren't even playing in October who have seemingly endless amounts of talent and are only entering the prime of their careers. Mike Trout, Andrew McCutchen, Giancarlo Stanton, Bryce Harper, Manny Machado, the list goes on and on. Yet, if you asked a casual sports fan to pick these guys out of a lineup of faces, most of them would have a tough time doing so. Ask someone who knows nothing about sports who Peyton or Eli Manning are. They are those guys who have hosted Saturday Night Live. Aaron Rodgers is the Discount Double Check guy. Tom Brady is the guy married to the supermodel. NFL stars are not only great players on the field, but they are known nationwide. Major League Baseball just doesn't seem to realize that in order for their postseason games to be more appealing nationwide than a matchup of middle-of-the-pack NFL teams, it has to do a far better job of marketing these guys than they do now. NFL players spend their Sundays covered in helmets and facemasks and they are still more recognizable than MLB players who are in plain sight for nine innings! Come on, MLB, what are you doing?!?!
What yesterday showed us was that baseball has become relegated to a regional sport. People in Wrigleyville and Dodgerstown might be interested in baseball right now, but if not for their Cubs and Dodgers making the playoffs, they wouldn't watch any baseball until 2016. As a native of Brooklyn, New York, I can tell you beyond a shadow of a doubt, that without the Mets, everyone in the five boroughs of New York City would be 100% focused on the Jets and Giants, and would have no impetus whatsoever to watch the MLB postseason, and as I look at the NFL primetime schedule for next week, it is going to be more of the same. On Sunday night, the Patriots go to Indianapolis to play the Colts, and I will be watching that game without question unless something unbelievable happens in whatever MLB game might be going on. Either way, I will be watching football, and maybe, occasionally, switching to baseball. Then, on Monday night, the Giants will be in Philadelphia, and the chances of me ever switching channels while that game is on is even less than the chances of a snowball surviving in hell.
I really like baseball, and when I watch my team, I am hanging on every pitch. When I watch anyone else though, baseball just seems to sort of be background noise, and based on what cable ratings say, I seem to be in the vast majority. When I watch my football team, I am hanging on every snap. When I watch any other team, the game is still front and center, and I don't see that changing anytime in the near future, unless Major League Baseball can make these young stars recognizable not only on the field, but off the field as well. The last time Major League Baseball was truly on the top of the charts on a nationwide scale was when the sport was dominated by athletes pumping all kinds of performance enhancing drugs into their bodies. The substances may have been legal at the time, but the entire steroid era has really skewed the baseball record books, and looking back on the time with 20/20 vision, it seriously hurt the history and tradition of a game that I love.
So, to conclude this far too long diatribe, I just want to try to get my point across that the players are doing their job. It is the MLB executives who are failing them miserably. If they could market their stars to a national audience, it would mean more money for everyone. Why they don't seem to realize this fact is beyond me, but until it changes, Major League Baseball will continue to be background noise in the national sports consciousness, and the NFL will dominate the sports world just like it has been doing for quite a while now.
Daily Giants Update: With a typical, New York Giants, teetering on the verge of defeat kind of comeback victory, we now sit alone atop a very mediocre NFC East. A win in Philadelphia this coming Monday would be huge, and with the Cowboys facing a dire situation due to injuries, the Giants need to take this opportunity and run with it. Anything less will be unacceptable.
Daily Rangers Update: It is only three games into the season, but the Rangers couldn't have started off better at 3-0. We get Winnipeg tonight, and as is the case now with every single game the Rangers play, I expect to win. It is all about the postseason now with this team though. I thought they had the best squad heading into the playoffs the past two seasons, and they failed to get it done. Excuse me for saying this so early, but this regular season really doesn't matter. It is Stanley Cup or bust. Nothing else matters.
Daily Diamondbacks Update: 2015 brought about a whole lot of positive things for Arizona. We actually have an embarrassment of riches in the outfield, and while we also don't exactly have two concrete starters in the middle infield, there are certainly a number of solid candidates. With #1 pick Dansby Swanson on the way as well, I think the future looks a heck of a lot better than finishing 2014 with the worst record in all of baseball. The pitching staff needs to be the main focus of the offseason, because Patrick Corbin may be a future top of the rotation fixture, but we really need to shore up the spots after him. It will be interesting to see what Dave Stewart and Tony LaRussa can do this offseason.
No comments:
Post a Comment