Baseball and soccer both have passionate fans, and passionate haters. I've never understood people who hate on a sport because it's not their thing.
I love baseball. It's my favorite sport. The UConn men are my second-favorite team, behind the Red Sox. Even when the Sox aren't in it, I love the sport and got really into the Royals playoff run last year and the great World Series.
People have been trying to write off baseball for 100 years.
http://hardballtalk.nbcsports.com/2...ing-nonsense-the-case-for-baseballs-vitality/
But as much as I love baseball and I think its demise is exaggerated, it IS skewing too old and too white. With Bud Selig finally gone, maybe MLB can get some real leadership. The (modest) measures to pick up the pace is a start. It's not the time of games, but the pace of play. They also need to start marketing African-American players, luck Andrew McCutchen and Lorenzo Cain, better.
I also think MLB needs to really help attract kids of ALL races, but especially black. Ask parents, especially mothers, do you REALLY want your kids playing football, or would you rather have them play baseball, where if they make the majors, they have guaranteed contracts, unlike the NFL. And remind them that baseball players don't retire at 20 the way Casey Cochran did.
As for soccer, I think I think it's a good sport, the MLS is doing better than it did, and there definitely is more interest in European leagues than ever -- and that big soccer people have much more interest in that than the MLS. The World Cup has gotten huge, and it should be. With pools it's like a once-every-four-years March Madness, and since everyone except Native Americans has ties to somehwhere else, a lot of people have two teams to root for, the USA and the country of their hertiage.