I was watching the Sunday Night Football game post-game show (having no baseball on TV this time of year makes me yearn for some sort of competitive showing!) and I saw a defensive end for the Vikings getting interviewed by the talented, yet seriously diminutive Andrea Kremer.
As I watched this interview, I noticed that this 6 foot 7 inch (or so) end was well-spoken, intelligent and even congenial. It suddenly occurred to me that this guy is why baseball, while more successful than it’s been in sometime, is no longer America’s Past Time. There is a serious deficit in how many english-speaking baseball players.
However, almost exclusively Americans play football. This is not the only reason for baseball’s having passed the torch to the gridiron. One other leading reason is that there are only 20 or so games (if your team is ‘in it’) during the course of a season. However, with baseball’s having 162 game season with as many as 19 more games in playoff baseball, it is a LONG season.
There is little to do to fix the game, that has not been done. There has been talk about shortening the season and evening out the layers of playoffs. However, that will do little to effect the game. That said, I cannot see baseball becoming any less international.