The Black Hole of Sports

[BUHusky]

But you're just talking about clay still. Sampras wasn't as 'complete' as Nadal because he wasn't good on clay, but he was much better on the truer surfaces. Sampras would have killed Nadal on grass, and probably beaten him handily on hardcourt as well. But particularly that stretch in the 90s, he was basically unbeatable at Wimbledon, winning 7 in 8 years.

How am I just talking about clay? Did you miss the part about Nadal having 5 majors and a gold medal on non-clay surfaces? Nadal is excellent on "truer" surfaces. Nadal is excellent on all surfaces. Sampras was not. This isn't hard.

 

[boba]

When I first saw the subject of your post I thought you were referring to Carmelo Anthony after you pass him the ball....

LOL! He doesn't even let the ground touch the ball...

 

[CallMeBruce]

How am I just talking about clay? Did you miss the part about Nadal having 5 majors and a gold medal on non-clay surfaces? Nadal is excellent on "truer" surfaces. Nadal is excellent on all surfaces. Sampras was not. This isn't hard.

But the only surface where Nadal is better is clay. That's the only thing he has on Sampras. Sampras was the better player at three of the four major events, and on grass he was a much, much better player.

 

[BUHusky]

But the only surface where Nadal is better is clay. That's the only thing he has on Sampras. Sampras was the better player at three of the four major events, and on grass he was a much, much better player.

Your lack of comparative context is quite impressive, so it's pretty pointless to continue this conversation.

I look forward to your next recruiting scoop. Until then...

 

[Palatine]

July is the Tour de France.

The world's best athletes engage in a drama that lasts a month.

 

[WhereistheDove?]

If you're legitimately in your early 20s - i.e. born around 1990 - and this is actually true, you must have grown up in some bizarre alternate universe version of Fairfield County or had a bunch of outcasts for friends because I genuinely can't believe that this is true.

Which part of that? Plenty of people played lacrosse but they sure as hell didn't watch it or go to games. Soccer got a much bigger following towards the end of my time in high school (2008) but the amount of people who would consider themselves as soccer fans was substantially smaller than the amount of people for baseball. For whatever reason, the fans of soccer especially (can't say about lacrosse since I've only ever really experienced them on this message board) seem to think that way more people follow soccer than actually do.

 

[Wise2]

There are a few reason why Baseball is still doing well.

1. Parity - There are no dominant super teams anymore. You can win be in the basement one year and win it the next with some rented free agents.
2. More Playoff teams - With the wildcard teams more teams are in the hunt longer, which keeps their fans engaged and coming to the ballpark and watching baseball in September, instead of their team being 10 games out with now shot, they are 2 games out of a wildcard spot and giving it everything they got.
3. Lastly don't underestimate fantasy sports - My son's in high school and does Fantasy Football and Baseball and it keeps them engaged in the sport. They watch it and watch the highlight to see how their teams are doing. That's keeping the younger generation involved.

 

[superjohn]

Baseball isn't dying - it's actually doing rather well.

Ratings are terrific on regional networks even if national games are seeing the same kind of viewership declines that even the NFL is beginning to suffer. They sold about 74M tickets last year and revenue is growing at a very healthy rate. (Baseball is much less reliant on national television money than is, say, the NFL - baseball gets less than 10% of their revenue from the national networks, so claiming that their revenue is a function of television's overly optimistic deal-making is basically bunk.)

If you took the NBA's revenue and added it to the NHL's revenue and then threw in MSL and the CFL, you'd basically have baseball.

Basically baseball is still doing well with fans of the local team, people will still tune in to their favorite team locally but don't tune in for the national game like football and basketball fans do. The NBA is going to get better rating this year than the World Series did, that would never be the case in the past. Baseball's bigger problems are it is no longer cool with young people and the game is entirely dead as a city game, no black kids want to play baseball. Old people still like baseball so it has that going for it.

 

[mets1090]

If you're legitimately in your early 20s - i.e. born around 1990 - and this is actually true, you must have grown up in some bizarre alternate universe version of Fairfield County or had a bunch of outcasts for friends because I genuinely can't believe that this is true.

I also grew up in Fairfield County and was born in 1990.

When I was in high school, our girl's soccer team won the state title 3 straight years and the boy's team won the FCIAC once (I think) and placed a few players at the D1 level. I wouldn't say people cared about either team until they were playing for the FCIAC or CIAC title. People may have cared more about the girl's team because there were some smoking hot girls on it.

As for lacrosse, it was viewed as a combination of people who weren't good enough to make the baseball team and football players who just wanted something to do in the offseason. I can assure you no one cared about it.

 

[IMind]

Basically baseball is still doing well with fans of the local team, people will still tune in to their favorite team locally but don't tune in for the national game like football and basketball fans do. The NBA is going to get better rating this year than the World Series did, that would never be the case in the past. Baseball's bigger problems are it is no longer cool with young people and the game is entirely dead as a city game, no black kids want to play baseball. Old people still like baseball so it has that going for it.

Yes, but a crap ton of hispanic kids play it. We have AAA team here now in the Lehigh Valley. It set league records in attendance. That's with a AA team 40 miles away that draws really well. Tons of young kids are packing the stands. Then look at how many levels of pro baseball there are. Rookie ball, A, AA, AAA. Then there are tons of high school and college age teams between Legion ball and AAU. Baseball isn't going anywhere. More people watch baseball live than any other professional sport... it's not even close.

 

[CallMeBruce]

I also grew up in Fairfield County and was born in 1990.

When I was in high school, our girl's soccer team won the state title 3 straight years and the boy's team won the FCIAC once (I think) and placed a few players at the D1 level. I wouldn't say people cared about either team until they were playing for the FCIAC or CIAC title. People may have cared more about the girl's team because there were some smoking hot girls on it.

As for lacrosse, it was viewed as a combination of people who weren't good enough to make the baseball team and football players who just wanted something to do in the offseason. I can assure you no one cared about it.

What school was this?

 

[mets1090]

What school was this?

Trumbull High

 

[IMind]

Anyway to get back to the OPs lament. I agree... the worst day of the year is the day after the All-Star game. There's absolutely nothing on worth watching. The fact that they put the ESPYs on that day makes it doubly depressing. There's nothing on TV worse than the ESPYs.

 

[HuskyCLT]

Something I haven't seen mentioned much here about baseball is the rise in international players. Baseball is expanding overseas, we are seeing more players from South America and Japan than we ever have before. So, overall, I don't think the game is necessarily going to go away anytime soon. Along with that, the internet and new TV deals are allowing people from all over the world to watch baseball (and hockey, basketball, etc for that matter). For every viewer lost in the US, there could be more gained in other countries.

Also, there are still plenty of kids all over the country who grow up playing baseball. While you might see more kids playing lacrosse or soccer in New England, baseball still reigns supreme in many regions of the US such as the South and SouthWest.

I do see how watching baseball is less popular among kids in our modern era: it actually requires an attention span of some sort.

 

[CallMeBruce]

Trumbull High

So you graduated in, what, 2008? There were a couple of seasons in there where Trumbull was top-15 in the state. They were never on the level of a Darien/Greenwich/Ridgefield, but they were sending a bunch of kids to college every year.

 

[WhereistheDove?]

I also grew up in Fairfield County and was born in 1990.

When I was in high school, our girl's soccer team won the state title 3 straight years and the boy's team won the FCIAC once (I think) and placed a few players at the D1 level. I wouldn't say people cared about either team until they were playing for the FCIAC or CIAC title. People may have cared more about the girl's team because there were some smoking hot girls on it.

As for lacrosse, it was viewed as a combination of people who weren't good enough to make the baseball team and football players who just wanted something to do in the offseason. I can assure you no one cared about it.

I was in Fairfield and would say that lacrosse was bigger there (though you're right, it was still mostly the off-season activity for football players), but when we start talking about watching lacrosse for enjoyment (ie. college, pros, etc.)..... no one. To say that it is more popular in that area than baseball as a spectator sport, just no.

 

[mets1090]

Yeah class of 2008. The boy's team was very good but never sealed the deal in the conference or state (except the FCIAC my sophomore year). The girl's team I think only won the FCIAC once but won the state tile my last 3 years there.

People obviously supported the team the way you would support any sport. We're friends with everyone on it so obviously we want them to win. I would just say that claiming Soccer had passed baseball was untrue. They were probably close to even ground which I suppose is a leap from where things were 10 years prior. It's also difficult to say because the baseball team wasn't great when I was there but they did have some good teams when I was in middle school.

I maintain the position that no one cared about Lacrosse.

 

[CallMeBruce]

Yeah class of 2008. The boy's team was very good but never sealed the deal in the conference or state (except the FCIAC my sophomore year). The girl's team I think only won the FCIAC once but won the state tile my last 3 years there.

People obviously supported the team the way you would support any sport. We're friends with everyone on it so obviously we want them to win. I would just say that claiming Soccer had passed baseball was untrue. They were probably close to even ground which I suppose is a leap from where things were 10 years prior. It's also difficult to say because the baseball team wasn't great when I was there but they did have some good teams when I was in middle school.

I maintain the position that no one cared about Lacrosse.

Enough people cared to make them very competitive in the best league in the state, and one of the best public school leagues in the country. Maybe you didn't care, but obviously someone did.

 

[HuskyCLT]

Lacrosse: super fun to play, pretty boring to watch as a spectator.

 

[WhereistheDove?]

Enough people cared to make them very competitive in the best league in the state, and one of the best public school leagues in the country. Maybe you didn't care, but obviously someone did.

This thread isn't about playing, it's about watching sports and a tiny amount of people would consider themselves lacrosse fans even in the most lacrosse-heavy area of the country. It's just not a spectator sport that people care about for the most part.

 

[Rico444]

Basically baseball is still doing well with fans of the local team, people will still tune in to their favorite team locally but don't tune in for the national game like football and basketball fans do. The NBA is going to get better rating this year than the World Series did, that would never be the case in the past. Baseball's bigger problems are it is no longer cool with young people and the game is entirely dead as a city game, no black kids want to play baseball. Old people still like baseball so it has that going for it.

I think the whole steroid issue hurt baseball a lot, too. It was huge back before the strike and then again when Sosa and McGwire were crushing the ball. It took a big hit with that whole scandal. Now that the steroid issue has been tackled head-on and offensive numbers are down, I think a lot of the people that left the game or lost interest are going to come back. The numbers on black players staying with baseball are starting to slowly grow as well. So while baseball isn't perfect and has its issues, the idea that it's dying or going to get passed by soccer anytime soon is a stretch.

 

[HuskyCLT]

I think the whole steroid issue hurt baseball a lot, too. It was huge back before the strike and then again when Sosa and McGwire were crushing the ball. It took a big hit with that whole scandal. Now that the steroid issue has been tackled head-on and offensive numbers are down, I think a lot of the people that left the game or lost interest are going to come back. The numbers on black players staying with baseball are starting to slowly grow as well. So while baseball isn't perfect and has its issues, the idea that it's dying or going to get passed by soccer anytime soon is a stretch.

I agree with this, particularly since baseball is the most statistic and record-oriented sport out there. It really is a sport where it is easiest to compare somebody by numbers and what they have done, as opposed to something like basketball or football where there are endless intangibles that don't show up on a stat sheet. That being said, having "tainted" records and a whole period of time where people can't trust the validity of their comparisons or if someone was clean or not certainly hurt the sport for a bit. I think it's coming back, though.

 

[huskiesNhoos]

So you graduated in, what, 2008? There were a couple of seasons in there where Trumbull was top-15 in the state. They were never on the level of a Darien/Greenwich/Ridgefield, but they were sending a bunch of kids to college every year.

Was trumbull L or LL? I can't remember if i ever played them in high school (class '05), but i know my club team played them a bunch, and they definitely had some good players then.

Nobody really came out to soccer games then except for stragglers from other sports practicing (football, xcountry, etc), parents, and some of the girls from other schools. However, once states rolled around we had some huge crowds. I think it's just like that for a lot of sports now in general, where regular seasons are an afterthought and playoffs/tournaments are all that matters. I heard some statistic for the NHL where the year boston won it they had (guessing here) 20million viewers then the year after there were only 4million viewers. Not hard to make sense of that statistic, but it shows how regionalized sports are getting vs the past where everybody was a cowboys fan, yankees fan etc. It probably helps too that all the leagues are experiencing more parody then ever before

 

[sledog]

Aren't the national power farting championships right after the 4th of July?

 

[storrsroars]

Time to throw up the annual Harris Interactive poll on America's favorite sport (question being, what is your favorite sport to watch, there's no 2nd place).
They didn't include lacrosse or MMA.
Takeaways:
1) Baseball ain't dead yet. It had a bounce last year.
2) Millenials mostly don't care about major sports.
3) The Northeast sucks as a college football hotbed (but you already knew that).
4) Soccer is still rising, joining NHL and NBA as the USA's fifth favorite sport.

 

[superjohn]

I think the whole steroid issue hurt baseball a lot, too. It was huge back before the strike and then again when Sosa and McGwire were crushing the ball. It took a big hit with that whole scandal. Now that the steroid issue has been tackled head-on and offensive numbers are down, I think a lot of the people that left the game or lost interest are going to come back. The numbers on black players staying with baseball are starting to slowly grow as well. So while baseball isn't perfect and has its issues, the idea that it's dying or going to get passed by soccer anytime soon is a stretch.

Something like 8% of MLB players are black, I'm going off of memory and there was only one black player in the World Series last year. Everything I've read and seen with my own eyes shows that black kids are playing way less baseball than they used to. This is clearly a problem baseball has to address.

 

[superjohn]

Lacrosse: super fun to play, pretty boring to watch as a spectator.

Agreed, I loved playing it but never really got into watching it.

 

[storrsroars]

Something like 8% of MLB players are black, I'm going off of memory and there was only one black player in the World Series last year. Everything I've read and seen with my own eyes shows that black kids are playing way less baseball than they used to. This is clearly a problem baseball has to address.

Nobody's arguing that point. But the reasons have already been addressed in this thread - you don't get very far just playing LL or HS ball. The track for pros is through travel teams/AAU, which generally make parents attend the (many) road games. Thus it's a combination of cost, lack of opportunity, and changing culture - it's not just hard to find kids for a decent pickup game, it's even harder to find a place to play since most suitable fields are either reserved or verboten these days. So it's become strictly a game for middle class and up, not dissimilar to hockey.

Of course there aren't those same barriers in Latin America, so those kids continue to grow up playing everyday - and have flooded MLB in the past few decades.

Again, I suggest you read the Andrew McCutchen article on Player's Tribune. He covers the issues pretty well.

 

[Gurleyman]

Time to throw up the annual Harris Interactive poll on America's favorite sport (question being, what is your favorite sport to watch, there's no 2nd place). They didn't include lacrosse or MMA. Takeaways: 1) Baseball ain't dead yet. It had a bounce last year. 2) Millenials mostly don't care about major sports. 3) The Northeast sucks as a college football hotbed (but you already knew that). 4) Soccer is still rising, joining NHL and NBA as the USA's fifth favorite sport.

One of the things I find bizarre there is that only 32 percent of people think ultimate frisbee is a sport. By any possible definition of a sport, it is, it's just using a frisbee instead of a ball.

 

[TheChamps990411]

Sure MLB attendance is still going to be fine for a while. I'm just saying, in the younger generation, soccer is starting to compete with baseball. I see many kids now watching the BPL and there's far less interest in the MLB right now in kids than say 10-20+ years ago. It could be many decades down the road, but it just feels like baseball will eventually go stale.

Your post is stale. Baseball has been around over 100 years and is going nowhere. For you to say soccer could move ahead of baseball in this country is laughable. Soccer WILL NEVER be big in this country. Sure itll get interest during the world cup and olympics if the U.S. does well but once those events end its back to obscurity.

Like the great Mike Ditka once said "if God wanted us to play soccer he wouldnt have given us arms"