Not So Funny

I keep thinking of this old W.C. Fields’ joke—first prize for some contest is a week in Philadelphia and second prize, two weeks.  Now, we can add a third prize, watching the World Series.

The Nationals and Astros went seven interminable games before Washington came out on top; talk about pyrrhic wins for a sport.  By my calculations, the games averaged 3:45, or thirteen minutes longer than Super Bowl LIII.  The shortest Series’ game clocked in at 3:19 while the two longest went 4:01 and 4:03, respectively.  Oh, and those two games featured both teams using a combined nine and ten pitchers, respectively.  Wait, there’s more.

On Monday, the Associated Press reported that the commercial break between innings went 2:55, or just a tad under three minutes.  Now, multiply that seventeen times to get 49.58 minutes in ads.  (You don’t multiply by eighteen because, when the games end, they didn’t cut to commercial right away.)  So, what’s killing baseball?  That’s easy.  A style of play that consists of walks and strikeouts in pursuit of homeruns coupled with never-ending ads.  That 49-plus minute figure doesn’t even include those irritating “quickies” that ran during mound visits or any other short stoppage of play.  Anyone care to join me in being sick of A-Rod ordering his coffee on the run?

A sportswriter in today’s Tribune thinks baseball needs to market its star players better; I don’t.  A player’s a player, regardless the sport.  Does the NFL really market Tom Brady or the NBA LeBron James?  I’d argue both sports market the winning those players represent.  Fans wanted to be like Michael Jordan because he won championships, first and foremost.  Great seasons minus a championship ring equals Ernie Banks or Jerry Sloan.

Also consider that baseball has always appealed to our better angels.  Why does that matter?  Because Americans are pretty much a smash-mouth lot; we like to give better than we get.  That’s the appeal of football, in a nutshell.  Dick Butkus, the Purple People Eaters of Minnesota and NFL Films led the way, and baseball has been in decline ever since.

In baseball, on-field injuries other than hit-by-pitch are the exception, not the rule; in football, injuries happen all the time, game in game out.  Football fans are not above booing injured players, and some players argue for the right to play a brand of football that can seriously injure opponents.  Baseball fans debate the morality of the brush-back pitch.

The sport that doesn’t appeal to our baser instincts will always have a tougher time of it.  Loading up roster with pitching staffs; chasing after homeruns and the power-arms to stop them; going with openers and late-inning match ups; and paying for all of it with an endless stream of commercials will only hasten baseball’s demise as a major sport.  Either the game finds a way to beat the clock, or time runs out on the game of baseball.