• Is baseball really not popular in America anymore?

    From Terrence Clay@21:1/5 to All on Mon Apr 17 22:42:10 2023
    https://www.quora.com/Is-baseball-really-not-popular-in-America-anymore/answer/Jon-Mixon-1

    No, it’s not.

    Let’s see:

    Many high schools no longer have baseball teams, especially in smaller rural schools and inner city schools - If you want to play baseball in high school, your parents are going to have look for schools that have programs and which have no plans to
    cancel them. Most male high school athletes go out for football, basketball, or track & field. Almost no high schools have baseball for female students; nor do they even have softball teams any more.

    Most baseball fields these days are no longer at schools , but public parks or in standalone facilities - Trips to practice at these locations is time-consuming and difficult if your parents do not have private transportation or public transport isn’t
    close. That’s discouraged a number of child athletes from the sport.

    Little League associations are not as popular as they were in my youth or even two decades ago - Not only do you rarely see Little League games on the weekends any longer, you rarely see teams practicing in local fields. Since this where many future
    American players are derived, this is a major problem in keeping the game sustainable.

    College baseball isn’t very popular in most areas any longer - Most people don’t watch college baseball on television and very few can name the popular teams or even the winners of the national championships over the last decade or so.

    Most sports radio stations no longer air live baseball games - In my youth during the 1970s, even though I lived in Nevada, a state with no professional team, the San Francisco Giants, the Oakland A’s and the Los Angeles Dodgers all had their weekend
    games aired on the radio and then later on local television if the networks didn’t carry the games. This no longer occurs and worse most people no longer listen to baseball on the radio.

    There are relatively few African American baseball stars any longer - Most African Americans no longer watch baseball, not only because they didn’t play it in high school or college, but also because there are few African Americans (as opposed to Afro-
    Latinos) who are popular players. Given the better public relations schemes that the NFL and NBA employ, it’s unlikely that this is going to change in the immediate future.

    The cost of attending baseball games is staggering - While the losing teams have cheap tickets, the best teams cost MONEY to see, especially at home. Given the recent economic setbacks and the pandemic, many people can no longer afford average tickets,
    and season tickets are an unrealistic proposition for most. The other sports have high prices also; however they also have covered stadiums or indoor arenas which make attending their games more comfortable for many.

    Baseball was declining 40 years ago, questioner, and little has been done to stop the slide. Even if owners are paying their players outlandish sums of money, unless they decide to staff their teams exclusively with imports from Latin America, Asia and
    the few Americans who manage to make through the dwindling number of colleges and shrinking farm team, eventually they’ll have to pare things back or be forced to sell off the teams.

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