Major League Baseball Has Not Become Unpopular
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Major League baseball has not become unpopular. It is still a moneymaking league with pretty high overall attendance. But as football and basketball have emerged, baseball today clearly takes a second or third seat when it comes to popularity as a sport. This is in contrast to the 1950's and 1960's, when baseball was the 'national pastime'. It's clear that today, football, or perhaps basketball, are closer to being the national pastime. Surely, some credit must be given to the sports of football and basketball. These sports do provide plenty of excitement. Peoples' opinions change. But let's assume for a moment that the rise of those sports happened at least in part because of a decline in the popularity of baseball. What has changed about baseball in the last 40 or so years that might have contributed to this decline? 1. Free agency Baseball was the first major sport to adopt free agency. Allowing players to become free agents allowed the players to get paid a lot more money. And it also gave an advantage to teams with seemingly deep pockets. Small market teams have more trouble holding onto players. Increased salaries can also lead to higher ticket prices. That makes it harder for poorer people to enjoy a game. However, free agency happens in the other sports too. As do higher ticket prices. So I doubt this change is at the root of baseball's decline in popularity. Baseball and football have always been more expensive than baseball, and still are. So I don't think this is a big reason for the shift in popularity. 2. The designated hitter. \ Starting in the mid-seventies, the American League has allowed another player to hit and run for a pitcher. As dumb and offensive to baseball tradition as this rule is, if it was to account for baseball's decline in popularity, then we would see a large difference between the popularity of National League baseball and American League baseball, and we don't. So I'm not buying it. 3. Starting pitchers pitching fewer innings This is a recent development in the past 10-20 years. While dumbfounding, it is a strategic choice of the managers and possibly the general managers and/or players, and not a structural change. While it may be responsible for a decline in the appeal of the game, it's also not something that requires a structural change to remedy. I believe that, in time, this will work itself out as teams realize that the classic way of doing things actually made a lot of sense. 4. Length of the game. Since the 70's, a game that is already on thin ice when it comes to attention span has gotten even longer. Each inning change and pitching change creates a commercial break, and these breaks have been constantly extended as TV providers seek to include more commercials. There are fewer pitchers working fast, and, until recently, not much of an effort to get them to speed up. I think this does have a small but significant contribution to the decline in popularity of the game. 5. Astroturf This blight upon the game has been almost entirely removed. And yet, baseball's popularity has not magically returned. It's true that there is a difference between grass and artificial turf when experiencing the game as a fan. But in my opinion, this is a relatively minor issue when talking about the experience of the fan. Which brings us to: 6. The replacement of the places we go to watch the game. There are now only two stadiums remaining that were in operation 50 years ago, and only 5 that were in operation 30 years ago. Everybody knows about the 'scourge of cookie cutter stadiums' introduced in the 1960's and 1970's. These stadiums moved fans farther away from the field and were also lacking in quirky character compared to the fields they replaced. They also frequently featured artificial turf. But like artificial turf, these abominable cookie cutter monstrosities have all been eliminated, right? Well.. yes. All but one (Toronto's Skydome, which is also used for Canadian Football) has been replaced by a new stadium built exclusively for baseball - a new modern retro ballpark designed by the architectural firm HOK. Almost all of these new stadiums have less capacity than their predecessors. They do have built in quirks and asymmetrical fields to go with their wider concourses and greater number of food choices. Sure, they are more expensive, but isn't it worth it to get an ideal mix of authentic baseball and modern convenience? Well…. With the help of the excellent baseball websites clemsbaseball.com and stadiumpage.com, I conducted research - looking at the designs and grandstand profiles of every stadium that was ever home to major league baseball. And I discovered something extraordinary. Contrary to popular belief, for the great majority of fans, these new retro parks don't bring you significantly closer to the action. In terms of where they position fans in relation to the field, they have much more in common with the scourge-y, multi-sport cookie cutters than they do with the ballparks of the first part of the 20th century. And not only have these new retro parks replaced the stadiums built from 1962 - 1985 - they've also replaced all of the pre-1962 ballparks, with the exception of Fenway Park and Wrigley Field. So not only have Shea Stadium, the Astrodome, the Kingdome, Riverfront Stadium, and their ilk been replaced - the new retro parks have also replaced Tiger stadium, Milwaukee County Stadium, Yankee Stadium, and Comiskey Park* *Technically New Comiskey Park is not a 'retro' stadium, but it is a baseball only facility. In 1960, a trip to the ballpark meant you could see a game in a certain way. That way is now completely unattainable for 28 of the 30 major league teams. In this article I will explain how it came to be that your chances of getting a great seat at a major league baseball game are worse now than they were in 1960, 1970, 1980, 1990, or 2000. * * * I think this is an enormous issue in the decline of this particular sport. It is commonly understood by most fans that, in the 1960's and 1970's, the desire for increased capacity, better amenities and multi-sport use led baseball's owners and municipalities to create venues which changed the experience of the game, and not for the better. However, what many fans don't realize is that In the 1990's and 2000's, the desire to recapture what baseball had lost, coupled with a desire to provide more luxury amenities for high-dollar customers, coupled with a desire to get an attendance boost from the excitement of a new stadium, caused baseball owners and municipalities to make the same mistake, in a different way. And this time, they have replaced not half the ballparks but almost all of them, including those used by franchises that had not fallen prey to the 'scourge' of the 60's and 70's. Amongst the three 'new' reasons for getting new ballparks, the addition of luxury seating clearly took precedence. In terms of recapturing what baseball had lost, the new designs certainly have their share of exposed steel and brick work, and quirks that make each stadium unique in terms of its field dimensions. Also, like many of the 1950's ballparks, the new ones lack symmetry. Many of them are also in downtown, urban areas, which does contribute something positive to the feel. Also, though it doesn't have much local flavor, they tend to have advertising all over the walls, like the old parks did. However, in terms of the most important aspect of the game experience - how the fan sees and hears the game- these new ballparks have much more in common with their 60's and 70's cookie cutter counterparts than they do with the ballparks of the 1950's. It's true that all of the new ballparks, being built for baseball alone, have grandstands that hug the foul lines rather than arc out in a circular configuration. That is an improvement for some of the replacement fields. For example, Shea Stadium in New York had a very wide circular configuration and Citi Field corrects that. However, since Yankee Stadium did not have a circular configuration, the new Yankee Stadium does not offer that advantage over the old. And, as I shall demonstrate, in terms of other aspects of fan placement, none of the new stadiums actually bring back the baseball perspective that was attainable by the 1950's baseball fan. To illustrate this, let's take a look at Shea Stadium, and compare to one of the ballparks it replaced, Ebbets Field (Technically, Shea replaced the Polo Grounds, but since Citi Field's design suggests Ebbets Field, let's just go with Ebbets). Ebbets Field was a good example of a ballpark at which one might see a game in the 1950's. It had a lower deck and an upper deck supported by columns, and a roof above the upper deck, also supported by the same columns. The grandstand went around 3 sides of the field, and the 4th side was open. Capacity was 32,000. In the mid-fifties, Walter O'Malley, the Dodgers' owner, sought to increase his profits by building a larger stadium. He wanted it to hold 55,000 people and be domed, and be located in downtown Brooklyn.