Baseball is dying and the powers that be don't care.

[TNRED]

It's now a little after 10 pm in the East and this Houston and Chicago game is just starting the bottom of the fourth. This game could potentially last until after midnight. They say they want to increase interest among the kids but most kids have school tomorrow and even us old timers have to go to work tomorrow. I miss complete games and stolen bases and hit and run baseball. Of course I am told that I am old and that isn't coming back. I now have to appreciate home runs and strikeouts and each team using 6 pitchers. So the game isn't for us old timers and obviously not for kids who have to get some sleep. I guess it isn't even for the guy who has to go to work unless he just sleeps 6 hours or less. Apparently MLB doesn't give a damm.

[Tony Cloninger]

How many times are we going to be told this before it actually is dying.

I’ve been hearing this since the 80s. Kids stay up late on their iPhones. They can handle late games. The world is filled with insomniacs. This is at the bottom of baseball issues.

[westofyou]

Thanks Al Spaulding


Sent from my iPad using Tapatalk

[Coopdaddy67]

I don't understand why you think MLB (or the NFL, NBA, etc.) should tailor their schedule around you.

Each of those leagues wants their playoff games in primetime to maximize profits/viewership.

This game has been longer than a standard game. It happens. It's not uncommon for NFL games to go past midnight on Sunday and Monday either. Hell, during the NBA playoffs many games don't tip off until after 9 or 10:30.

[kaldaniels]

Glad to see Abe Simpson is alive and well.

[Tom Servo]

That game was cool

[mth123]

The first time I remember hearing this was in 1976. We're still here.

[Phhhl]

It's now a little after 10 pm in the East and this Houston and Chicago game is just starting the bottom of the fourth. This game could potentially last until after midnight. They say they want to increase interest among the kids but most kids have school tomorrow and even us old timers have to go to work tomorrow. I miss complete games and stolen bases and hit and run baseball. Of course I am told that I am old and that isn't coming back. I now have to appreciate home runs and strikeouts and each team using 6 pitchers. So the game isn't for us old timers and obviously not for kids who have to get some sleep. I guess it isn't even for the guy who has to go to work unless he just sleeps 6 hours or less. Apparently MLB doesn't give a damm.

People should not be shamed for having this opinion. It is legitimate, and I share some of your concerns. My biggest problem is with the postseason tv deal. The season ends, and unless you have a cable package that included ESPN, TNT, TBS and the MLB network, some or ALL of it disappears for two weeks. That is a serious problem for baseball. They have to be slotted like football games so they do not overlap. it is a real turn off, and what the pandemic and these stupid tv deals have taught me is that after 50 years of living and breathing baseball I can go long stretches without it and be just fine. I attended about 10 games this year, and really enjoyed it. But when not in attendance I was not compelled to turn on the radio or watch highlights. Instead of grabbing for every dime and associating itself with organized gambling, baseball should make some decisions moving forward to get the game in front of more eyeballs. That is the long game.

[RedTeamGo!]

Did you know Chicago and Houston are not on eastern standard time?

[Reds Freak]

I think the biggest issue is the length of the commercial breaks. They're unnecessarily long in the regular season and it's awful in the postseason. Cut out a commercial from each break and you automatically shave 20-25 minutes off each game.

[westofyou]

15 runs were scored in those four innings, six pitchers pitched and there were 155 pitches thrown, seven walks and twelve K's.

The start time isn't the problem, it's the game that is causing the lag, not commercials... long ab's, pitchers in the stretch.

It's a game without a clock.

Accept it or watch a game with a clock.

Maybe baseball can fix this somehow, but it's not as easy as saying get it done

[BillDoran]

It's not going away, going away, in the fashion of the USFL, but it's definitely shrinking its slice of the American attention span (along with plenty of other things).

Be fair, it's a slow game that takes a while to grow an appreciation for. Other sports are fundamentally better positioned. They're quicker paced. There are frequent exciting events.

Baseball is also hamstringing itself, making itself harder and harder to find. I've railed against the "streamlining" of the minor leagues. The difficulty in watching/streaming games is absolutely absurd. The leadership doesn't know its hand from its butt and is scared. They rival only the NCAA in executive incompetence.

I'm a born and bred baseball fan, as are many of my friends. We were talking this weekend and truly don't know the AL, nor much outside the NL Central. I very rarely watch baseball games, catch a few a year in person and mostly follow through highlights and the box scores. I'm a Reds fan, so I'm used to shutting my baseball fandom down as football season ramps up, but every year it gets a little bit harder to care. There's not much parity. Year-to-year competitiveness changes little, and Cincinnati is seemingly locked into a middle-class or worse position for perpetuity.

I'm not breaking any news here, but anybody pushing back on the the creeping irrelevance of baseball is turning a blind eye to what's going on. It's a slow sport not especially fit for the times, and the leadership is a joke. It takes a super smart baseball ops or a profligate owner to break through if you're outside one of five markets. It's been broken for a while, but Selig and Manfred's solutions are about working around the margins. The fixes on the table are not going to fix the present trajectory.

[westofyou]

It's a 19th Century sport in the 21st Century, it's flawed as packaged evening TV entertainment. But the advertisers want night games, that's because they can sell adult stuff in a zillion markets. In the beginning of radio the games were played in the daytime and the main audience were woman in the home, children and guys who worked the late shift or early shift, so they sold cereal (it's how Wheaties got big) and other household goods. Then came night games with beer, cigarettes and razors; all flush with money and ready to sell to men.

[Roy Tucker]

What time did the NFL Sunday night game end?

[mth123]

The thing is, everything is shrinking its slice of the American attaention span. When I was a kid there were three TV Stations and the radio. Now I have hundreds of stations, streaming, other on-line entertainment to choose from. With more options means more fragmented audience. I just don't think the dramatoc "Baseball is Dying" proclamation is appropriate. Almost everything is "Niche" these days because there is so much to choose from.