Malaise in Mudville
by Jon Worley

I've been reading a lot in the past couple of weeks about the "demise" of baseball. I just attributed that to the sour grapes of local columnists, who always couched their disses in terms of the Orioles becoming the first team to lead wire-to-wire and not win the World Series. As most folks know, they didn't even make it out of the American League playoffs, and the local hacks blamed not the players but "this disfunctional playoff system" for that lack of post-season achievement.

Sure, ratings are down. I remember much the same discussion surrounded the Royals-Cardinals series of 1985, which pitted two teams from the 15th most-populous state. Not too many folks in New York or L.A. cared much that year, and this season I'm hearing the same complaints. Personally, I don't pay a whole lot of attention to any sport when one of my teams isn't doing well. And so I haven't worried too much about the World Series since 1985 (though as a closet Blue Jays fan, I had a bit of a renaissance earlier in the decade), and I can't ever remember watching a Super Bowl with much enthusiasm, unless I had the chance to root against the Cowboys.

I'll admit, I don't care as much about baseball as I did when I was 10, but then, no one does, with the possible exception of Bob Costas. There are too many sports out there to catch my interest. Apart from the holy American trinity of football, basketball and baseball, there's professional hockey and soccer (indoor and out), arena football, lacrosse, roller hockey, pool, a wide array of motor sports and the ever-present track and field. The pseudo-sports of wrestling, gymnastics and ice skating (the latter two aren't much more competitive than the first, despite the use of "impartial" judges) are very popular on the tube, and imports like Australian football also capture attention. Hell, I spent an hour watching Gabe Kaplan calling play-by-play at the World Series of Poker. Imagine Kotter reeling off lines like "He was in this spot a few years ago in a pick-up game in Peoria, and he had two deuces then. I think he's got the two ducks" and you get the idea.

Just like the networks that have broadcast baseball for more than 50 years, the sport itself is losing market share. This has been going on since the NFL and AFL merged, creating a real rival for the lords of the diamond. In recent years, pro basketball has also made a sizable dent, but even the college forms of basketball and football are stealing viewers and fans away from baseball. And like I noted, there's plenty of more offbeat sports that are clamoring for attention. There's really no way baseball can ever climb back to where it was in 1985, much less 1965.

And it shouldn't. Baseball is still the #1 spectator sport in the U.S. (no NBA, NFL or NHL team has ever recorded a season's attendance of two million, much less the three million that the Orioles ran through the turnstiles this year), and given the length of its schedule and size of its stadiums, that will probably never change. Baseball will never lose its nickname, "the national pastime", because I don't know anyone who would describe hockey, soccer, basketball or football as a "pastime".

Baseball is a contemplative sport, a game that taxes the mind as much as the body. In order to be a fan, you actually have to know a good amount about a terribly complicated game. Most sports involve merely grinding meat or hurling objects in quest of the highest or the fastest. In baseball, the fastest pitchers are generally not the best pitchers. Nolan Ryan may have pitched very fast for a long time (and struck out more batter than anyone else), but he won only a few more games than he lost. The acknowledged best pitcher around these days, Greg Maddux, hasn't consistently hit 90 with his fastball in ages. Fireballer Randy Johnson was merely a flamethrowing oddity until he learned how to change speeds and keep the ball in the strike zone. Some of the finest hitters in memory, like Wade Boggs, Paul Molitor and George Brett, are of average physique. Tony Gwynn, the best hitter going these days, is somewhat overweight. It's the mind (not classical intelligence, mind you, but baseball smarts) that makes the difference.

Which is why stuffy white guys like George Will like the game so much. Hell, it's why I liked the game when I was a kid. When you're 12 years old and 60 pounds, you know you'll never play football. When you look at your dad and uncles and see no one taller than six feet, you know you're not gonna play basketball. And when you grow up in the midwest, you won't hear word one about hockey. So I fantasized about baseball. After all, the Royals had a shortstop named Fred Patek who was five-foot-five. Not much bigger than me. If he could play, why couldn't I?

The answer to that question became obvious a few years down the road, but the fascination with baseball has remained. And I'm not going to worry about this so-called "wasting away". Hell, the Negro Leagues flourished without any major media attention, and so could Major League Baseball (Inc.). The players would make less money, and there might not be so many home runs, but the game will survive.

This year's World Series went seven games, and no team held more than a one game advantage at any one time. The seventh game went to extra innings and was won when the Marlins' shortstop hit a two-out dribbler up the middle.

Two outs. Bases loaded. Bottom of the 11th. A kid's childhood dream, to be sure. Ignoring all of the extraneous periphery, I'd say the game of baseball is doing just fine.

Jon Worley is still waiting for one more magical Royals season.

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