Baseball Musings
Baseball Musings
March 12, 2005
Baseball Mythology

Scott Craven pens a nice essay on the hold of baseball over its fans.

There are other sports that may be considered more popular than baseball when judged by the numbers. TV ratings for football are almost unapproachable. NASCAR races routinely draw more than 100,000 fans to ovals across the country.

But numbers are too logical to explain our romanticism with baseball, Bellamy says.

"If you go by metrics, by statistics, baseball doesn't do very well," he says. "But the sport is about much more than that. It brings about feelings that are hard to quantify."

Baseball is Coca-Cola. It may not win the taste test, but it's fans are deeply loyal.


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Posted by David Pinto at 01:07 PM | Baseball | TrackBack (0)
Comments

I agree with that. Baseball fans are unique in that we love everything about the game and I mean everything; we count every pitch, swing, and catch as if each play was important.

Posted by: georgiaboy at March 12, 2005 06:56 PM

How about cumulative number? Yeah, NASCAR packs a TON of people into an oval once a week, but how many people go to the ballpark every week? More than 100,000. Baseball covers that in a handful of games, but each team plays 162 games a year. And how about cumulative ratings for TV? Football is watched on Sundays, but baseball is watched 7 days a week. You can't just compare numbers on a per-event basis, let's look at numbers for the whole year.

Posted by: sabernar at March 12, 2005 10:57 PM

Sabenar said what I wanted to, the NFL and NASCAR boast "loyal" fans who spend 3 hours a week watching all the action. A real baeball fan spends 18-21 hours, 26 weeks a year following their team.

Posted by: Al at March 12, 2005 11:17 PM

BASEBALL IS LIFE

Posted by: PAUL at March 13, 2005 02:38 PM

There's nothing like hearing the "crack" of the ball on the bat. Nothing like seeing a home run soar. Nothing like baseball. Period. Baseball IS life. It is the ONLY reason I own a t.v.

Posted by: Eileen at March 13, 2005 10:43 PM
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