Is baseball really a joke nationally?

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

Here is the starter from a NYC sports radio message board:

 

I have been away from the New York metro area now for over a year, and don't get a chance to listen to the show any more. However, about a month ago, I was back east (in Norfolk Virginia, actually) and was able to pick up WFAN about 11 pm, when the signal travels further. Steve Somers was on. Though not completely clear sounding, I was able to make out a conversat

ion between a caller and Steve about the Mets. I laughed, and turned the station off. Here it was, the middle of January, a week and change before the Super Bowl, the Nets in first place, the Rangers playing well, controversy with the Knicks, and the FAN and its callers are repeatedly beating the baseball tom-tom. It seemed to me then that nothing has changed with the station's incessant obsession towards baseball. For me, it's amazing the sport is able to attract majority attention, even during the football playoffs, in New York. Nationally, the sport is almost a minority trash sport, indeed, here in New Mexico, it is marginalized. However, in New York, it seems to be the only sport worth calling in on, even in January. I ask the rhetorical question: why? Even after all the work stoppages it has endured, fans in the NY area just can't stop following this dull, uninteresting game.

 

I reply:

Baseball is a minority trash sport? Gee Fox, ESPN, SPR all give baseball proper coverage. This isn't NASCAR and last time I checked the World Series does beat the NBA Finals ratitings wise

 

Oh and who is the greatest sport trademark/licenced/ect franchise in the world? Baseball's New York Yankees Not the Cowboys, not Manchester United, not the Lakers

 

Oh yeah, read some history books, then you'll see baseball was at its peak THE game in America. A big slice of Americana, especially in New York, Boston, Baltimore, ect And it still is #2, okay maybe 3 if you want to count college football

 

He answers me and some others with this:

Quote:

As for baseball in NY. Baseball is NY. We are actually at the point where you could talk about baseball 365 days a year in NY and Boston and some of us do.

 

 

That's just the point. Growing up in the NY metro area, you are instructed to believe that baseball is the national pastime. It's not even close. Baseball is a hyper-regionalized game, New York and Boston being that axis, with outliers in Chicago (Cubs) and St Louis. The rest of the country, and you have to trust me when I say this, does not give a damn about baseball. I lived for 4 years in the Philadelphia area. I frequently listened to WIP 610 there, and there were hardly any calls about the Phillies, and that was in season. Most calls concerned the Eagles, and that was in April/May. This is the way the majority of the country feels about its sports. In El Paso Texas/Southern New Mexico, the emphasis is on UTEP athletics, college football especially. Baseball is not mentioned AT ALL in conversations on the talk radio shows here. And nationally, that's the way it is. Now, you might ask why I broach this topic. In a nutshell, since baseball lacks a salary cap, teams that have fervent interest within their cities enjoy an advantage that teams in most other cities (read: Pittsburgh, Milwaukee, Kansas City) can't overcome. Therefore, the free agency activity will forever be dominated by the Yankees, the Mets and the Red Sox. Therefore, any victory your NY baseball teams enjoy, to me, would seem to be hollow. It is my hope that another work stoppage will instill a salary cap, therefore to counteract the baseball interest in the New York metro area. The lack of a salary cap works in tandem with the unfair advantage that the NY teams enjoy, due to this (in my opinion) misguided interest.

 

I just retorted with this:

 

mike0421 wrote:

That's just the point. Growing up in the NY metro area, you are instructed to believe that baseball is the national pastime. It's not even close. Baseball is a hyper-regionalized game, New York and Boston being that axis, with outliers in Chicago (Cubs) and St Louis. The rest of the country, and you have to trust me when I say this, does not give a damn about baseball.

 

 

You JUST answered your own question. If you were still living in Virgina or living anywhere in the Bible Belt, MS, Florida, ect people would be asking you why do they talk so much damn NASCAR when no one else in the country gives a rats behind about it

 

Ditto NHL in Detroit, (thinking of a US city where hockey is still a hotbed, not too many left) or even College baseball in the midwest

 

Quote:

I lived for 4 years in the Philadelphia area. I frequently listened to WIP 610 there, and there were hardly any calls about the Phillies, and that was in season. Most calls concerned the Eagles, and that was in April/May.

 

 

And that is what makes Philly an overated sports town and why NY is so much better in terms of talk of their teams year round

 

Quote:

This is the way the majority of the country feels about its sports. In El Paso Texas/Southern New Mexico, the emphasis is on UTEP athletics, college football especially. Baseball is not mentioned AT ALL in conversations on the talk radio shows here. And nationally, that's the way it is.

 

 

Okay, so why does ESPN Radio give so much time to baseball? Why does Colin Cowherd feel the need to defend ARod when according to you he deserves as little attention as Roger Federer and Jeff Gordon (two other dominant yet polarizing athletes in "minority trash" sports)

 

Quote:

The lack of a salary cap works in tandem with the unfair advantage that the NY teams enjoy, due to this (in my opinion) misguided interest.

 

 

So what would you rather New York be talking about? Lets see:

 

Pro Football. Okay Giants and Jets, and in recent years football, eh since Free Agency kicked in, has been a legit 12 month sport. So you'll get no argument about more Pro Football convo

 

College Football. Uh, the closest you'll get to College Football in NYC is either DII with Iona (who just unveiled a brand new facilitiy), Hofstra (who is losing the Jets in a completely unreported story by the way), ect. Rutgers and UCONN count but are too far away program wise to really give the NYC Metro Area a boost into major College Football. So the talk gets dominated by all the ND, Michigan, BC, Ohio State, Penn State, ect alumni/fans that call up and thats not enough to really get fired up except from September through the Bowl Season. Okay you might get the Mel Kiper wannabes saying a kid they saw on the Dish play in a few games for Washington might be a good pickup during the draft period (right now) but that period ends roughly around April. I mean no one around here cares that much about what Florida is doing in their Spring and Summer practices.

 

 

Pro Basketball. Talking Knicks goes back about a good 40 years or so now, maybe 50 I don't know how well the Knicks of the early-mid 50's were received here in New York, but the glory days of pro hoops in New York started in the 60's with Walt, Reed, DeBucherre, Bradley, ect, having a team win 2 championships in 4 years will elevate a franchise and sport. The Nets, are a different story, but if a big story involves the Knicks, then it will be discussed ad nausem here in NYC. Probably only a month or so (Aug-Sep) of real "down time" these days due to free agency, but then again the Knicks do have to be GOOD or the station has to be in bed with them for serious day-to-day conversation of NBA hoops before the postseason (and BTW 1050 RARELY covers the NBA after the Knicks or Nets season ends)

 

College Hoops. There was a time, long ago, when College Hoops was a legit king in New York City. That time has passed. Point Shaving scandals caused many of the dominate schools to either shut down or scale back the programs, probably as the Knicks were rising thats when College Hoops were dying. Just St. Johns is left in the majors. Oh sure Fordham and Manhattan are still in the inner cities and Iona, Fairfield, Hofstra, Long Island and others keep things interesting in the outlining areas though if you are into small and mid-majors that fight to get a single digit seed in the NCAAs. Of course thanks to St. Johns being in the confrence its in, National College Hoops talk does get talked about alot as fans of the Johnnies are probably also Big East supporters, and The Big East is still a major player in the National Scene. So while local talk might be a scattered handfull of calls a month, nationally its huge, though only during season (Nov-March)

 

Hockey. For the most part, only when the Rangers are good is hockey given a platform, unless the host opens up and says "Only hockey on this show" so there might be a chance for the first time in, almost a decade for some decent late spring hockey talk here in this town.

 

Others. Do you REALLY want me to get into the other sports that for the most part are villivied by all except a few hosts on local sports radio? Tennis, Golf, NASCAR, Boxing, Horse Racing All treated as jokes except for the few that are nuts about them:

 

Tennis, Chris Russo

Golf, Russo, Francesa, Brandon Tierney

NASCAR, Don LaGreca

Boxing, Max Kellerman, Wally Mathews, Tony Paige

Horse Racing, Wally Mathews, Francesa, Jody McDonald

 

Other than that they are loathed and hated by the other hosts and treated as niche sports in this town

 

 

Quote:

On another note, I ask rhetorically, why is baseball such a dominant sport in the Ny/Boston area? It's such a boring game.

 

 

Again, your opinion. Baseball is still #2 or #3 right now, and MAYBE College Football can be slotted higher. And your opinion of it being boring is clouding your judgement of why its dominant in NY/Boston. People think football is actually boring. Hell people think sports in GENERAL are boring. In other words, I don't think you are looking for an answer here and I'll leave it at that

 

So I ask, is this guy just being a troll, or is baseball really treated, eh, like Arena Football or the XFL on the national landscape the way this guy is making it out to be.

 

Well the fact that he seems to have gotten the answer to his question and still asks them seems like he is a troll, since he already has his own opinion and is just baiting the board. But then again is he right in his assement of sports on a national basis and that baseball doesn't have the "right" to be talked about anymore the way he is making it out to be (see NHL)

 

Course I just realize that I could have blown a hole in his argument by saying the NFL had two major work stoppages and in currently heading towards a path of CBA uncertainty, so its not like the NFL has been in complete utopian bliss as the major outlets want you to believe

 

Steve

[Jorge Gorgeous 0]

Portland loves baseball, and we don't even have a team.

[yankovic fan 0]

Well my university had a dual undergrad/graduate course on the books this past semester called "Problem in History." P.I.H. is a reoccurring course with different subject matter each time it is taught.

 

I spoke with the instructor about it and he said the topic of the semester was either going to be the History of Baseball or the History of the Louisiana Sugar Plantation. He said he was going to go with majority opinion.

 

Just the fact that a PHD was considering teaching a course that can be applied towards a Masters, in baseball, tells me that baseball is NOT was this guy in your experience implicated.

 

(For the record he ended up going with History of the Louisiana Sugar Plantation, damn nerds. I didn't take the course because it was too early in the morning.)

 

Baseball does have critics of this level. I can tell you though there is a very strong following of the sport, especially with the more elite crowd. All of my friends that went to private school have their favorite baseball teams. The professor I mentioned previously works baseball into his lectures in other courses. I even played devils advocate with him once when he said baseball was the ultimate sport (I asked him "How tough could a pitcher be with a 330 pound DE sitting on him after taking too long to throw the ball?").

[The Czech Republic 0]

Baseball is the thinking man's sport. Football, despite the intricate playbooks, and all that overblown "THIS IS AN ANCIENT WAR STAGED ON A FIELD OF MODERNITY" NFL Films narration, is really just two rows of large men bumping into each other over and over.

[EVIL~! alkeiper 0]

Is baseball a joke? 69 million fans attended MLB games last season. 41 Million fans attended minor league baseball. Another 7.5 Million attended independant league baseball games. The sport has really exploded in popularity the last five years or so, where many levels of baseball underneath the majors are getting noticed. Heck, an NCAA Baseball game is now a feasible product. And NCAA baseball is hardly a NYC product.

 

This is the product of one person's opinion, nothing more.

[Dobbs 3K 0]

I think the guy in the original post's opinion is colored by the fact that he lives in an area without a nearby MLB team. Yeah, if there's not a local baseball team, chances are, the people on local radio won't be talking about it...well, duh.

[The Man in Blak 0]

Heck, an NCAA Baseball game is now a feasible product.

 

That's a little bit of a stretch. The NCAA game was licensed as such out of necessity, rather than any growing popularity for college baseball. EA Sports needed to have some kind of a license on their baseball game, which was already into development, but the MLB license exclusivity had already been snatched up by another competing company. The MVP series was too successful for EA to completely close up shop for a year, so they slapped the NCAA trademark on it and ran.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Baseball's not a joke, but it IS laughable that people still consider it the national past-time. Football, in my opinion, passed it during the lock-out/strike (I forget which it was, the one in the mid-90s) and baseball hasn't been able to catch back up.

 

Yes, MLB has huge attendance numbers but the teams play 162 games a year, not including the plus post-season. And, yes, it gets better TV ratings than the NBA or NHL, but neither of those leagues are lighting the world on fire these days. After living in Colorado for 5 years in the late 90s/early 00s, I can say that Rockies talk on sports radio was few & far between. So to say that it's only areas without a pro team that are apathetic about the game is inaccurate.

 

In summary, it's just that one guy's opinion, but I do think that baseball fanatics & people in cities like Boston & NYC really do have a false understanding of how beloved the sport is.

[Mik 0]

Heck, an NCAA Baseball game is now a feasible product.

 

That's a little bit of a stretch. The NCAA game was licensed as such out of necessity, rather than any growing popularity for college baseball. EA Sports needed to have some kind of a license on their baseball game, which was already into development, but the MLB license exclusivity had already been snatched up by another competing company. The MVP series was too successful for EA to completely close up shop for a year, so they slapped the NCAA trademark on it and ran.

 

 

Well, obviously it won't have the mainstream appeal of the MLB game. I hang out in some circles where we all take minor league and college baseball a little too seriously and I know people who were practically willing to camp out for this thing. Some people just love college baseball.

 

As for the original post - the guy who said those things was an idiot. I don't think a further rational explanation is needed. If I had to guess, I would state that baseball is the overall #2 sport in the United States behind the NFL. #2 for white people, #3 for black people (NBA) and #1 for latinos, who also happen to represent the largest growing section of America. I honestly think baseball will be be #1 again in 20 years.

[The Man in Blak 0]

After living in Colorado for 5 years in the late 90s/early 00s, I can say that Rockies talk on sports radio was few & far between. So to say that it's only areas without a pro team that are apathetic about the game is inaccurate.

 

Not really the fairest example, though, is it? For starters, Elway and the Broncos might as well own the whole city of Denver for their back-to-back Super Bowl wins in the late 90's. Secondly, the team as it stands right now is a complete joke; when the Rockies were making playoff runs early on in their history, they were among the league leaders in attendance. Finally, the Rockies could still be considered a recent expansion team - they haven't been around long enough to build enough history to create a diehard fanbase that will stay with the team through the valleys of the success cycle.

[Guest Princess Leena]

I don't see the point in arguments like this.

 

If you think a sport is a "joke" and you won't be interested in it, just because others don't want to talk about it... you're a stupid asshole. Main reason I don't bother listening to sports radio, any longer.

[Steve J. Rogers 0]

I don't see the point in arguments like this.

 

If you think a sport is a "joke" and you won't be interested in it, just because others don't want to talk about it... you're a stupid asshole. Main reason I don't bother listening to sports radio, any longer.

 

Is that directed to me or the other poster? Personally I don't give a damn what the guy likes or doesn't like

 

The guy came to the board asking Why baseball is so damn popular in the NYC-Boston regions where its 4th, maybe 5th behind the NHL everywhere else in the country, I'm trying to prove that baseball is still top 2, maybe top 3 across the board in the country and shouldn't be lumped in with niche sports like tennis, NASCAR, golf, ect

 

My point also is that the guy is being too bull headed and acting like a troll with his comments

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Baseball is no longer the undisputed #1 sport in America. Not to say they AREN'T #1, but if they are, it's probably in a sharing capacity with football. The White Sox winning it all will turn fortunes around though.

 

And Steve, can you PLEASE explain to me how one person's misguided opinion is worthy of a thread?

[nl5xsk1 0]

Baseball is the #3 sport, behind football and NASCAR, in my opinion. Basketball & hockey are borderling irrelevent to many people.

 

And, TMiB, regarding the Broncos owning Denver ... the Patriots are on a better run right now than the Broncos were then, and yet Boston is still dominated by Sox-talk. To say that one team's success would impact another team's relevance isn't entirely accurate. If people cared about the "less successful" team, they'd still talk about them.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Whoa whoa. NASCAR is HUGE in some areas but not nationally. No way. At least not more popular than baseball.

[naiwf 0]

I don't see the point in arguments like this.

 

If you think a sport is a "joke" and you won't be interested in it, just because others don't want to talk about it... you're a stupid asshole. Main reason I don't bother listening to sports radio, any longer.

 

Is that directed to me or the other poster? Personally I don't give a damn what the guy likes or doesn't like

 

The guy came to the board asking Why baseball is so damn popular in the NYC-Boston regions where its 4th, maybe 5th behind the NHL everywhere else in the country, I'm trying to prove that baseball is still top 2, maybe top 3 across the board in the country and shouldn't be lumped in with niche sports like tennis, NASCAR, golf, ect

 

My point also is that the guy is being too bull headed and acting like a troll with his comments

 

Your problem is that NASCAR has surpassed baseball but you still call it a niche sport. I think ESPN had a stat that said more people watched the Daytona 500 than any of the World Series games last year AND 6/7 of the NBA Finals. Hockey is a blip on the radar, and the NFL is king.

 

Granted in NYC, NASCAR may not be a big deal, but I guarantee you if we had a track based in the city, 150,000 to 200,000 people would show up for that race every year. Unless it's Mets/Yankees, Yankees/Sawx, or a World Series game involving the Mets and/or Yankees you cannot find that many people willing to go watch a baseball game. A Royals/Rockies all time classic 7 game World Series would draw absolutely NO ratings because NY, LA, Chicago and Boston wouldn't watch it. NASCAR on the other hand can have a race in Talladega, Bristol or California and still pack in 100,000+ fans AND draw big ratings as well. I believe that was the original guy's point. Baseball is regional, and many regions of the US simply don't care about baseball when THEIR team is not involved.

[MarvinisaLunatic 0]

Baseball's problem is that its by far the slowest sport..It can take 3-4 hours to play a 9 inning game. Hockey and Basketball fit into just over 2 hours..Football would be 2 1/2 if it weren't for the networks trying to recoup the rediculous ammount of money the spent on the rights through commercials..

 

A baseball game is inherently slow and thats HOW the game is supposed to be played. A pitcher tossing over to first 20 times to keep a runner from getting a huge lead..a batter fouling off 15 pitches just to stay alive in a 3-2 count..a manager stalling for time out on the mound to give his pitchers time to warm up in the bullpen...pitchers who take 5 minutes to throw 3 pitches.... Most people won't sit through a 3 1/2 hour movie, why would they sit through a 3 1/2 hour game where theres absolutely nothing happening for over half of it (theres over 30 minutes of nothing happening just between innings alone).

 

Dont get me wrong..I love baseball..

[Red Baron 0]

Is baseball a joke? 69 million fans attended MLB games last season. 41 Million fans attended minor league baseball. Another 7.5 Million attended independant league baseball games. The sport has really exploded in popularity the last five years or so, where many levels of baseball underneath the majors are getting noticed. Heck, an NCAA Baseball game is now a feasible product. And NCAA baseball is hardly a NYC product.

 

This is the product of one person's opinion, nothing more.

 

Which averages out to be 27,878 per game, per team. I don't know how is it so great when the average amount of fans per game is less than 50% of stadium capacity.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Reminds me of that Simpsons episode where the two aliens were watching the World Series and they got so bored of the pace of the game that they fast forwarded through the game and ended up sucking up the whole universe.

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Baseball is the thinking man's sport. Football, despite the intricate playbooks, and all that overblown "THIS IS AN ANCIENT WAR STAGED ON A FIELD OF MODERNITY" NFL Films narration, is really just two rows of large men bumping into each other over and over.

 

Bullshit. You know there's more to it than that. Under that logic, baseball is just a team ganging up on a batter by trying to catch the ball and throwing him out.

[nl5xsk1 0]

Whoa whoa. NASCAR is HUGE in some areas but not nationally. No way. At least not more popular than baseball.

Baseball's not huge nationally, either, Porter. It's the same as NASCAR: Huge in some places, nonexistent in others, and somewhere in between in most places.

[razazteca 0]

Baseball it the sport for the elderly and middle aged men

 

Basketball is for the youth who watch music videos

 

Football is the real national pasttime...the Superbowl is above everything

 

Hockey is for the frozen north and canada

 

NASCAR is for the south and rednecks

 

Golf is the #2 sport for the rich old white man

[bob_barron 0]

Steve J. Rogers should stop starting threads.

 

And no, baseball isn't a joke nationally, to think so would be stupid.

[Red Baron 0]

Football and Basketball are more popular in the USA than Baseball.

[naiwf 0]

Is baseball a joke? 69 million fans attended MLB games last season. 41 Million fans attended minor league baseball. Another 7.5 Million attended independant league baseball games. The sport has really exploded in popularity the last five years or so, where many levels of baseball underneath the majors are getting noticed. Heck, an NCAA Baseball game is now a feasible product. And NCAA baseball is hardly a NYC product.

 

This is the product of one person's opinion, nothing more.

 

Which averages out to be 27,878 per game, per team. I don't know how is it so great when the average amount of fans per game is less than 50% of stadium capacity.

 

And when you factor in that the 2 NY teams contributed anywhere from 6-7 million of that 69, it means that 2 teams brought in about 10% of the fanbase. I'm sure that if you add in the Angels/Dodgers, Cubs/White Sox, and Red Sox that you've probably hit well over 20 million right there from just the 4 biggest cities who care about baseball. It's a regional sport.

 

Actually here are the stats. The first set of numbers are the home stats, the second are the road ones, and the percentage of available seats sold. I forgot about the Cards and Giants, but if you add those cities in, the top 10 teams sold almost half of the tickets in a 30 team league.

 

1 NY Yankees 81 4,090,440 50,499 87.9 80 37,036 81.9 161 43,809 85.3

2 LA Dodgers 81 3,603,680 44,489 79.4 80 32,498 72.6 161 38,531 76.4

3 St. Louis 80 3,491,837 43,647 86.7 81 30,611 69.7 161 37,089 78.7

4 LA Angels 81 3,404,686 42,033 93.3 79 30,684 65.4 160 36,429 79.3

5 San Fran 80 3,140,781 39,259 94.5 80 31,695 68.4 160 35,477 80.8

6 Chi Cubs 80 3,100,262 38,753 98.0 80 36,389 80.9 160 37,571 88.9

7 San Diego 80 2,832,039 35,400 83.3 80 31,642 67.8 160 33,521 75.2

8 NY Mets 79 2,782,212 35,217 61.3 81 35,023 77.8 160 35,119 68.7

9 Boston 80 2,813,354 35,166 97.2 81 37,735 80.6 161 36,459 87.8

10 Houston 80 2,762,472 34,530 84.3 80 30,652 67.5 160 32,591 75.5

11 Washington 80 2,692,123 33,651 74.4 80 32,055 69.6 160 32,853 72.0

12 Seattle 80 2,689,529 33,619 70.4 81 27,604 61.7 161 30,593 66.1

13 Philadelphia 80 2,665,301 33,316 76.6 80 29,147 63.0 160 31,232 69.6

14 Baltimore 81 2,624,804 32,404 67.2 80 30,441 66.4 161 31,429 66.8

15 Atlanta 80 2,521,534 31,519 62.9 80 32,811 72.8 160 32,165 67.6

16 Texas 79 2,486,925 31,480 64.1 81 27,126 60.1 160 29,275 62.1

17 Chi Sox 81 2,342,834 28,923 71.2 79 28,004 62.5 160 28,470 66.7

18 Milwaukee 81 2,211,023 27,296 64.4 80 29,421 65.5 161 28,352 65.0

19 Oakland 81 2,109,298 26,040 59.6 80 29,814 65.6 161 27,915 62.7

20 Arizona 81 2,059,331 25,423 51.9 79 32,229 71.0 160 28,783 60.9

21 Detroit 80 2,024,505 25,306 63.1 78 26,437 57.7 158 25,864 60.2

22 Minnesota 80 2,013,453 25,168 51.7 81 27,368 61.7 161 26,275 56.5

23 Toronto 80 1,977,949 24,724 48.9 81 29,899 65.9 161 27,328 57.0

24 Cleveland 80 1,973,185 24,664 56.8 81 27,432 61.6 161 26,057 59.3

25 Cincinnati 81 1,943,157 23,989 57.0 79 32,246 73.3 160 28,066 65.2

26 Colorado 80 1,915,586 23,944 47.5 80 31,175 68.6 160 27,559 57.5

27 Pittsburgh 78 1,794,237 23,003 60.0 81 33,016 72.7 159 28,104 67.0

28 Florida 80 1,823,388 22,792 62.7 80 32,856 71.0 160 27,824 67.4

29 Kansas City 79 1,371,181 17,356 42.5 80 25,906 57.5 159 21,658 50.4

30 Tampa Bay 80 1,124,189 14,052 32.1 81 29,235 64.5 161 21,691 48.7

[USC Wuz Robbed! 0]

Whoa whoa. NASCAR is HUGE in some areas but not nationally. No way. At least not more popular than baseball.

Baseball's not huge nationally, either, Porter. It's the same as NASCAR: Huge in some places, nonexistent in others, and somewhere in between in most places.

 

Perhaps. I think that NASCAR markets themselves very well, as opposed to baseball's "Uhh yeah White Sox vs Astros. Umm.... "

[Red Baron 0]

The problem with Football and Baseball is that because the Super Bowl/World Series involve so much hype around certain teams, that when it comes to the actual event and the teams aren't involved, it gets shit on, analyzed nine ways from sunday about why these teams aren't in the finals, what can we do to make sure its structured for those teams to reach it, who's gonna watch it, etc... etc... We saw that in Baseball in recent years and just this pass year in the Superbowl. When New England wasn't respected, no one really thought that they could be a dynasty team, now thats what everyone is talking about.

 

People want to see New England/Boston, New York, Phili, Chicago in the finals. No one else. Thats the problem with Baseball and Football these days.

[Hawk 34 0]

NASCAR is for the south and rednecks

 

That's cute.

 

On the regular schedule, only 25% of races occur in what is considered the south and nearly 75% of the drivers are from...California, Washington, Missouri and Indiana.

 

What says redneck like California?

 

Football=#1, hands down.

 

Baseball lost that status for good with the 1994 strike and Baseball has slipped behind NASCAR.

 

You don't have to like NASCAR but to deny that it is the consistantly higher rated sport, the sport better geared towards young americans and females (it's true, nascar's largest demo is actually 18-34 females) and to use the 'redneck southern' excuse is wrong.

 

When your sport is dominated by corporate america, your top stars are based from California and Indiana (two areas, far from the south) and when your drivers are faces for other products and you are stationed in NY, California, Chicago, Mexico City as a big draw, with crowds over 120,000...you aren't a regional sport.

 

Baseball, could learn alot from NASCAR.

-How to promote

-How to market players

-How to properly punish wrong-doings and how to curb any possible scandal.

 

The faces of NASCAR are young, good-looking, media savvy spokesmen for fortune 500 companies.

 

The faces of MLB, are either unclear or old, bitter and grumpy steroid injected jerks.

 

I love baseball, more so then NASCAR but I'm wise enough to know that Baseball is a mess with everything right now. NASCAR is doing everything, the right way.

[The Man in Blak 0]

And, TMiB, regarding the Broncos owning Denver ... the Patriots are on a better run right now than the Broncos were then, and yet Boston is still dominated by Sox-talk. To say that one team's success would impact another team's relevance isn't entirely accurate. If people cared about the "less successful" team, they'd still talk about them.

 

And the reason that Boston is still dominated by Sox-talk is because the Red Sox have existed for over a century, far more years than the Patriots have had on the New England sports scene, which goes to my other point.

[Kahran Ramsus 0]

One problem that I have is that the season is one month too long, especially in the north. Baseball is primarily a summer sport, and when the season starts in April and fans have to drive through a blizzard to get to a game, it loses some of the magic. The NHL has the same problem in reverse. The Stanley Cup finals are in late June, when many fans have already migrated to their cottages. These aren't new problems and they can be overcome by winning, but they are there.