Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Jackie Robinson- these were the men who gave baseball its excitement and fans a reason to watch “America’s sport.” However, those guys played in the 30’s and 40’s, almost one hundred years ago. Now it’s 2013, and baseball just isn’t the same.  It isn’t America’s sport anymore.

Nowadays, baseball doesn’t compare to fast-pace sports like football and basketball. People don’t want to sit around for nine innings to wait and see something exciting. Michael Marcus said, “Baseball moves at a much slower pace than other sports and doesn’t have opportunity for exciting plays, so I really have no desire to watch it.” It seems that players are constantly waiting around in baseball.  While they may get a hit here and a run there, there is no equivalent in baseball to a Blake Griffin dunk or an Adrian Peterson touchdown. Some could go as far to say that they’d rather watch LeBron score 60 points against the Thunder than watch Justin Verlander throw a perfect game.

Last year, the top NFL team in attendance, the Dallas Cowboys, had an average home attendance of 88,531 fans, more than twice the amount of the top MLB team in attendance, the Philadelphia Phillies, who only brought in an average of 44,021 fans. Even the team with the lowest attendance from the NFL brought in more fans than the Phillies!  While this can probably be attributed to the fact that there are 162 baseball games  compared to only 16 football games in one season, less people are showing up for baseball games comparative to other sporting events.

Here in South Florida, sport’s culture has changed sporadically as of recent. For many years, the Miami Marlins (formerly the Florida Marlins) have been a team that just doesn’t win very much, and nobody wants to watch a team that is not winning games. People want wins, excitement, and big name players to root for on their favorite teams. After the “Big Three” (James, Wade and Bosh) came to Miami in 2011, the Marlins tried to sign a few superstars to match the buzz brought in by the Heat. But after a year, the Marlins are in the same exact position after blowing up their one year experiment- losing. “The reason people like watching the Heat and Dolphins more than the Marlins is that when you go to watch a Heat game, you are guaranteed to see some action, whether it be pre-game dunks or a big-time blocked shot. When you watch the Dolphins you are almost always going to see some action as well, whether it be a long field goal, a great touchdown pass or a huge sack on the opposing quarterback.”

Another reason baseball’s popularity is declining is because of people’s willingness and ability to play the game.  It’s not nearly as simple to organize a game of baseball with some friends as it is to play a pickup game of basketball, mostly because eighteen players are needed to play a game of baseball.   Furthermore, its not easy to learn how to pitch, catch, and hit a baseball. In fact, some say that hitting a baseball is the hardest skill to accomplish in the entire realm of playing sports.

So will baseball ever make a comeback? Maybe, but for now it doesn’t seem like it. With the rise of newer sports, such as lacrosse, and a growing passion for faster-paced sports, baseball’s comeback will be hard. If I had to put a bet on it, baseball’s comeback does not seem likely in the next few years to come.

All statistics source: http://bleacherreport.com/articles/333243-an-in-depth-analysis-of-the-decline-of-baseball-popularity