re: Anyone else surprised baseball is still popular in the United States?

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here did you read this?

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I linked it a few pages back when I first posted it. Came from yesterdays WSJ.

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No it isnt. The gap between the haves and the have nots seems to grow every year.

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What?

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That's just poor front offices, not parity.

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Baseball has the most intelligent front offices in major sports. They led the analytic revolution and were hiring intelligent business people to run their front offices before any other sport.

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The MLB season seems long but really from Spring Training to WS it is on par with NFL and NBA. I've proven that several times....

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I think it's the amount of games they expect you to follow. There is no way I could watch 162 games in that amount of time. There just isn't any way. In fact, I don't know how people attend 75% of them during the week. During the day. Somebody explain that to me?

The whole season setup doesn't make sense and doesn't lend itself to the casual fan. Playing 4-5 times a week is exhausting from a casual fan's perspective.

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the same teams aren't winning the WS nor are the highest spenders

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Well ok. Just teams like Houston and Miami who are allowed to implode kind of give the other perspective.

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MLB is all about parity.

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This statement is not correct.

But, fwiw, I think parity is overrated.

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The only argument you make is for title games. Popularity can't necessarily be gauged by that.

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TV ratings for Olympic swimming are through the roof, clearly swimming is america's new favorite sport.

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The only argument you make is for title games. Popularity can't necessarily be gauged by that.

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I don't have access to infinite amounts of information. I have google, just like you, and I'm doing the best I can.

Soccer is biggest youth participation sport in united states and I don't see those individuals as they get older following it the way kids follow MLB,NFL,and NBA

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At the high school level, baseball has held steady with about 15,786 programs in the U.S.-a number that ranks it No. 3 among all boys' sports. Youth sports officials say there's been a small decline in the number of teams, but largely because of funding cutbacks.

As for Little League, which covers kids aged 4 to 18, about two million kids played in the U.S. last year, compared to about 2.5 million in 1996-an overall decline of 25%. The only growth in youth baseball participation since the 1990s, according to the NSGA, has come from kids who play more than 50 times a year-which suggests more children who play baseball have chosen to specialize.

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The specialize thing is key because for many this is all they do.... baseball and basketball have become year round sports and as I said earlier kids no longer play a different sport with a different season. You play 1 sport for an entire year and baseball is trending upward in Latin America and in Asia

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The lack of a salary cap is a huge advantage for the large market clubs. I dont think this can be argued.

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It has been argued. You can't buy a championship baseball team. Before you say the yankees, their core guys were all home grown.

Explain the Rays?

Advantage? Sure Insurmountable? Not by any stretch.

First, if those are the BCS ratings, college football's in decline in ratings as well, which is no surprise. Everyone is, except the NFL. College football used to get ratings in the teens for its title game (or biggest bowl).

Five years ago, the NBA was getting a rating in the 6's. which they did twice. Now, they have had three straight Finals in which ratings are at the highest point in a decade. What could be going on here? Maybe it's that the nation's most popular athlete is LeBron James, and he's been in the Finals. That couldn't be it. And what happened to the NBA's ratings when Jordan retired? They declined by about 2/3.

But it pretty much shows everyone gets the same ratings now (a 10, if everything breaks your way) unless you are the NFL (or the NHL, in the other direction).

So, what those numbers tell us is that when their most marketable star who is a viewed as an all-time great is winning titles, the NBA gets better ratings than baseball. Otherwise, they get worse ratings. So the lesson is that Bud Selig should send Jeff Gilooly to LeBron's house.

If anyone thinks baseball isn't popular, they CLEARLY haven't spent anytime in the NE 95 corridor.

DC, BAL, PHI, NY, BOS.

I can understand someone from FLA saying this, but it's only because of ignorance.