Baseball Blues…
It has been coined "America's favorite pastime. " However, ratings and attendance have decreased significantly over the last 5 to 10 years for the classic sport of baseball. It begs the question why? Though there are likely many factors in the disinterest, the most obvious has to be the short attention span of today's fan. Forget about the actual game play and its snail pacing thanks to foul balls and pitchers walking the hitters. The real problem here is the length of time a fan must invest. From a ticket selling and TV viewer perspective, baseball as a sport has been scheduled poorly.

The biggest problem in baseball has always been the length of the season. Each team is required to play over 160 games. History tells us a great team can win around 95-100 games in a season. Therefore a fan must watch their team lose 60 or more times. How demoralizing as a spectator is this? Over 60 times you hear on the radio, read in the newspaper, or see in the stadium your team lose. …And these are the great teams! The good to average organizations lose around 70-80 games a season. Don't even get me started on the bad ball clubs. When you are a losing team in baseball, you are a losing team for a LONG time.

What reason is there to watch the first 50-60 games? There is no drama until after the all- star game (which takes place approximately in the middle of the season). When there are this many scheduled games, inevitably several are going to be seen as inconsequential. If they don't affect the playoff race, what is the reason to watch? In contrast, in football, which is a 16-week season, every game means something.

The large volume of games that must be scheduled within the season creates another problem. Some games are played on Fridays at noon. Other games at 2 pm on Mondays and so on and so on. Who can watch these? Aren't we alienating some of the potential audience by scheduling the events at these types of days and times? How can people with 9-5 jobs see these games? You have to take a vacation day or call in sick? Its almost like Major League Baseball is trying to position some games as "not as important as others".

Ultimately, the length of the baseball season creates fractured viewer-ship. Most fans will only watch or buy tickets for a portion of the games or even just the final few. More so, due to the shorter attention span of the younger generations, few of them will watch at all. The season needs to be shorter. But maybe that's not the only problem plaguing baseball…there is also that damn 7th inning stretch.

….but that's just my opinion.

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