| Sportswire | Apr 2 2017 |
It's time to get up for the best sport in the world.
Yes, hope springs eternal in Major League Baseball, and in the 1948 book Batter Up hope even leads to history. Marty Shane is a very good college player who becomes a mediocre minor leaguer, but through hard work and conquering various obstacles he eventually becomes a major leaguer, and plays a key role in his team's championship season. The story is the standard mythology of professional athletics anywhere in the world, written basically for teens, but in such a way that adults can enjoy it too. The cover art is by Robert Frankenberg, and inside and on the rear you get more illustrations from him.
Baseball is a polarizing sport, isn't it? The on-the-field action can seem slow. But that's an illusion—the actual changing nature of the strategies is constant, occurring from pitch to pitch, and often between pitches. Pitching, batting, running, and defensive strategies differ each second, with constant influence from both the players on the field and the manager in the dugout. That's one reason the game is great—it's chess-like, but on a level that anyone can understand. If they're inclined, that is.
Many people, particularly younger people, aren't especially inclined. Major League Baseball is poised to change the rules of the game in an attempt to draw more young viewers. Will they never learn? Chasing corporate advertising dollars, the league sacrificed young viewers thirty years ago when it moved toward mostly night games, making it much
more difficult for kids to attend games in person. The easiest way to ensure fresh generations of fans is to simply return to day games, including during the week, but instead they're contemplating a radical reworking of the rules to entice “low attention span” viewers.
more difficult for kids to attend games in person. The easiest way to ensure fresh generations of fans is to simply return to day games, including during the week, but instead they're contemplating a radical reworking of the rules to entice “low attention span” viewers. A daytime baseball game has to compete with no other sporting event—there's literally nothing else occurring on a spring afternoon. These day games are how we got hooked—2:30 p.m. start time, sitting there with our fathers, first appreciating the fun environment, and then the action. During a spring night or on a weekend there are other sports choices, and those will remain more superficially interesting no matter what changes are made to baseball's rules. What rule change, after all, can make baseball more exciting moment to moment than say basketball, whose season runs all the way through June? Night games also end late, usually around 10:30, which keeps kids out until 11:00 or 11:30—too late for some parents.
Living overseas, we can't attend baseball games. Instead we play fantasy baseball, and we're pretty excited for the start of the MLB season today, having won our league twice in the last three years. Unfortunately, our draft didn't go as well as we'd have liked this time around. But hope springs eternal indeed. And baseball spans the best season of the year—glorious, endless summer, which is lovely whether your team wins or loses. You may be wondering if baseball is in any way pulp. We think so, and we explain our reasoning here. And speaking of fantasy baseball, see below...
