The feeling of coming home never gets old.
The first two games of the World Series, a historic matchup between the Cleveland Indians and the Chicago Cubs, have drawn the best television ratings for the annual Major League Baseball (MLB) championship since 2009. The Indians’ last World Series win was in 1948. For their part, the Cubs hadn’t set foot in the Fall Classic since 1945 and last won the contest 108 years ago. These teams have long been considered two of the most beleaguered; some even believe that Chicago’s Northsiders might be cursed. And no matter how this year’s Series shakes out, fans know one long-time underdog will emerge victorious.
But along with this Series’ rise in ratings comes a painful question: Why have fans, and especially young people, been abandoning America’s favorite pastime? Baseball is “now the national pastime only through the nostalgic lens of history,” Marc Fisher wrote in the Washington Post in spring 2015. Fisher reported that baseball’s television audience skews older than that of any other major sport, and the number of kids playing baseball has been declining for decades, even though MLB’s revenue is at an all-time high. Rob Manfred, the commissioner of baseball, has emphasized during his tenure that the game now risks “losing a generation of fans.”
Scheduling at least some games before the dead of night is one easy way to get young people hooked on baseball. A game that begins at 8:00 p.m. Eastern time might end by midnight at the earliest. No eight-year-old is allowed to stay up that late, and so kids are rarely able to watch baseball and learn to love it. Though scheduling games earlier might present logistical time-zone difficulties, it would be worthwhile to experiment, especially for the World Series and the playoff games leading up to it. In fact, it wasn’t until the early 1970s that MLB switched championship games from afternoon to evening. Afternoon games might make it difficult for some fans to watch, but consider this: In the 1960s, nuns in some Catholic grade schools turned the radio on for entire World Series games because the kids, and the nuns themselves, wanted to listen.
Management of major-league clubs should work to lower prices across the board, at least from time to time. Lower prices for tickets, parking, and concessions and souvenirs (they tend to be absurdly expensive) would draw families and kids from across the socioeconomic spectrum into ballparks. When young children begin to root for a particular team, they often view certain players as heroes, and that bond is strengthened by the ability to see them play in person. But for a family with only two kids, attending a baseball game could easily cost upwards of $200 for parking, one hot dog each, and seats all the way up in the nosebleeds. How can a kid develop an affinity for individual players when she can barely see them, or when she can’t even afford to be there at all? As recently as 1970, a ticket to a Los Angeles Dodgers game for a seat just behind home plate cost $2.50, and the drastic rise in its price since then isn’t all due to inflation. Today’s kids would learn to love baseball much more easily if they could attend the occasional live game and have the ballpark experience — without their parents having to pay an arm and a leg to do it.
But some of this alienation might be culturally motivated and therefore hard for MLB to correct. For one thing, the plethora of intense action movies and first-person video games has molded a generation of young people who require fast-paced stimulation to hold their attention. Just watch a film-noir classic from 60 years ago and compare it to any of today’s vast array of quick and exciting action flicks. Kids are used to constant activity and become bored more easily by a methodical game such as baseball.
The breakdown of the American family also could contribute to some of the drop-off in baseball viewership. The Census Bureau reports that in 2014, nearly one-fourth of U.S. children lived in fatherless homes — that’s 17.4 million children. For most young people, a love of baseball (or any sport) begins at home, usually with a father who explains sports to his kids or plays catch in the front yard, instilling an appreciation for the finer points of the game and creating a shared, communal experience. It’s possible that the lack of present fathers in the U.S. has contributed to a general decline in kids’ understanding of baseball, making it much less likely that they will develop an interest in it later in life.
#related#The fact that baseball isn’t a size-based sport ought to make it appealing both to play and to watch. For instance, it’s common to witness a small, wiry pitcher with a particularly nasty slider strike out a bulky power hitter. But the historical nature of baseball suggests that America’s fatherless problem might best explain the underlying problem, as the common tendency to compare baseball players from different eras makes it an intergenerational game. It largely operates with longstanding, consistent rules, so that it necessarily doesn’t favor modern athletes over those who played a century ago. Until the steroid scandals of recent history, players such as Babe Ruth and Hank Aaron could be built differently and separated by decades but still be accurately compared through their statistics. Continuity such as baseball enjoys is absent in a sport like football, the rules of which have changed much more dramatically than those of baseball, especially over the past 40 years. This continuity uniquely positions baseball as a sport that fathers and sons — and families — can share.
Though cultural trends make it increasingly difficult to turn the attention and the hearts of today’s youth toward baseball, the seeds for a love of the sport are present. It has long been the nation’s pastime for a reason. The best hope for capturing a new generation of fans lies in the sport’s history, inspiring in young people a love for baseball by connecting it to the nostalgia of childhood and a feeling that never gets old: coming home.