baseball's falling popularity and its affect on our hobby

[the 'stache]

Funny, in yesterday's Dallas Morning News, I read an article that tv viewership for many of the most popular NFL teams was down--way down. Ratings for Dallas Cowboy games have dropped over 10%, and while you can try to explain it by their three straight 8-8 finishes, they're not the only big time franchise witnessing a drop. The Packers have witnessed a nearly 10% drop, too, as have a few other teams (which teams, and how much I do not recall, but I was surprised when I read the details). And the Packers, beyond this injury-plagued season, have been one of the top teams in the NFL, going 47-17 with a Super Bowl win the previous four seasons.

And I think this article was stupid. It's like asking a heterosexual male "do you like blonds, brunettes or redheads most?" If I had to choose one, I prefer blonds most of all, but I love brunettes and redheads, too. And I'm not going to stop looking at beautiful women who don't have blond hair. A beautiful woman is a beautiful woman. So, are brunettes going to suddenly start lining the pathways to monasteries because they're not "America's favorite?" Of course not. Trying to theorize that baseball is somehow in trouble because it's not the #1 choice is just a little absurd, imho. I know that Major League Baseball's attendance was down 2.9% in 2013. But keeping things in perspective, baseball had its sixth highest attendance ever this last year. 74,026,895 people went through the turnstiles.

Maybe MLB doesn't occupy the nation's attention the way it once did. As I've said before, there are more sports now, and a lot more entertainment choices. But I hardly think that the sport, or the hobby, is dying. The numbers simply do not support this hypothesis, and when a hack sports media outlet like ESPN tries to suggest that baseball is somehow "slipping", I just laugh.