Baseball is coming back

The last couple of years, I’ve heard a few jokes both in person and online to the tune of the same point.

“Baseball is boring.”

“Baseball is a dying sport.”

“Who watches baseball anymore?”

If you’re at all interested in watching sports, it’s not that hard to overlook Major League Baseball. The NFL is arguably the most popular it’s ever been, College football always provides drama, the NBA has blockbuster trades numerous times a year and the NHL playoffs have many fans tune in.

So with all these sports, surely baseball and the MLB is on the decline right?

Nope.

According to MLB, in person attendance is expected to skyrocket to the highest it’s been since 2017. So far this year, over 68 million fans have flocked to stadiums from Seattle to Baltimore.

This goes without mentioning the rising popularity of college baseball. More than 371,000 attended the 2024 College Baseball World Series throughout June (and a record setting 12,324 people watched the 2024 Women’s College Softball World Series final in Oklahoma City).

Who or what deserves credit for baseball’s jump in popularity?

It’s hard to say, but there are definitely a few factors helping baseball’s surge in popularity.

After declining attendance rates in 2022, MLB introduced the pitch clock with the goal of decreasing the time a pitcher has in between pitches, speeding up the game and making attending a baseball game less … lengthy.

It was heavily criticized by fans at first, but in my opinion and I’m sure in the opinion of many others, it’s a welcome change.

Speeding up the pace of play gives casual fans more of an incentive to tune in-there’s less downtime in between plays, and shorter games lead to fans being more tuned into the game.

Another factor that plays a huge role is the emergence of a new generation of stars for fans to watch.

Shohei Ohtani, a Japanese-born pitcher and hitter, moved from the Los Angeles Angels to the Los Angeles Dodgers, a team with one of if not the largest fan bases in all of baseball.

How’s his first year with his new team going?

Oh, nothing crazy. Just a season that has seen Ohtani become the first player in MLB history to hit 50 home runs and steal 50 bases in a single season.

Babe Ruth could never. We’re witnessing history right before our eyes.

Another star, Aaron Judge of the New York Yankees, has hit 56 home runs so far this year (as of Sept. 24). It’s the fifth most homers in a single season in Yankees team history-and leads the MLB this year.

The parity in the league this year has surely increased interest in the game; for the first time in a decade, no team will reach the 100-win mark in a 162 game season.

Storylines throughout the year have made for an entertaining season as well. The lovable New York Mets went from 11 games under .500 in May to being in the playoffs if it started today.

Even the McDonald’s character Grimace got in on the action, throwing out the first pitch of a Mets game on June 12.

The Mets would go on to win seven straight games after Grimace’s first pitch (coincidence? I think not) and would be immortalized by having his own purple seat placed in Citi Field, the Mets stadium.

Closer to home, the Kansas City Royals went from basement dwellers to playoff contenders in a single season, nearing the MLB record for the largest single season turnaround in the modern history of the sport; the team went from 56 wins and 106 losses in 2023 to winning 56 games by July.

If it’s been a while since you’ve heard about the Royals, you’d be right. It’s the franchises first winning season since 2015. Just don’t tell 11-year-old me that he’d have to wait more than eight years to see playoff baseball (hopefully) come back to Kansas City.

On a personal note, I and a few friends hadn’t followed baseball as closely the last few years.

Maybe it was due to the popularity of other leagues, but I can say at least for me- this season, we became invested in the sport.

We made multiple trips up to Kauffman Stadium in Kansas City, Mo., this year. The crowds for the two series we went to were both great; families brought their kids, thousands tailgated before games, fans from all ages and locations descended to watch.

That’s what baseball is really about.

It brings such a wide variety of people to the ballpark-families who rarely go to large sporting events, visitors in town for business, diehards, and yes, even college students like us.

Some would say that baseball is a sport of the past, and sure, it was invented in the 1840s.

But what this season has shown is that America’s Pastime isn’t just your grandfather’s sport. Or your fathers.

It’s our generation’s sport too.

Cleary Percy is a Haven sophomore studying Secondary Education with an emphasis on History.

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