The Double-U Show: 6 Reasons Why Baseball is Falling Off.....

Every night I used to dream of being a professional baseball player when I was a child. I had wild dreams about being the first baseman for the then-California Angels and knocking balls out of the park as I steam roll to glory. Well, okay, the Angels weren't that great, so let's say I dreamed about early July win streak glory. Nonetheless, baseball had my heart, my mind, and my attention. I worked hard at it every day, even to the point that I was the M.V.P. of my little league when I was 9 years old also appearing in the All-Star game (a regular Derek Jeter right?). Baseball is now lucky that I don't chuck the remote at the T.V. when I see a Reds-Pirates game in late August. I get so pissed off because I feel like baseball has forgotten about the fan altogether when fans are what helped build the league. Don't get me wrong, I still watch baseball and will go see a Diamondbacks game from time to time, but will you see me obsessed ever again? No. Now the six reasons why baseball is falling off....

1. Guaranteed Contracts
Let me get one thing straight, I don't have a problem with a player getting paid cash money baby. Let's not forget that although they're not doing something as noble as teaching, they're earning people hundreds of millions of dollars, entertaining millions of people, they hold the pride of the city, and we PAY TO SEE THEM. I don't pay to see teachers teach 8th grade math. However, the contracts of major leaguers are guaranteed. When you guarantee guys, at any age, millions of dollars for playing a game, they begin to not care. Hell, I'm doing this blog at work because I feel like I'm guaranteed to keep my job even if I get caught. By the way, I earn a very average salary. If I was paid 10 million dollars up frontto throw curveballs, I just might get lazy and buy a platinum rottweiler in between pitches.

2. Foreigners
I obviously don't mean this in a racist term because guys like Vladimir Guerrero, David Ortiz, and Pedro Martinez are the exact same skin tone as I and for those guys to play well and not be knuckleheads off the field does wonders for the image of our race despite the cultural differences. However, like I mentioned as one of the reasons that soccer has failed in the U.S. it's one of the reasons that baseball is struggling. I'll be honest though, foreign players have played baseball in America for DECADES, but as America continues to grow, especially with the hot-button issues of immigration (living in Phoenix it's doubly hot) lately Americans are having a hard time adjusting to guys like Luis Castillo who at one point were phenoms, but needed an interpreter to express "how great winning the World Series is." Let's not forget though that not only is there a ton of foreign born players, a lot of these guys are AWESOME. I've seen Vlad in person and not only is this guy one of the best ever he's a behemoth who whacked a grand slam into right field so hard the ball was shivering and asking who the bad man was. The best players in a sport in any country usually have an easier time if they resemble what most of the country looks like. Tom Brady is a star, but if he were in Rio de Janeiro he'd be that "funny looking white guy who does...some....ball....sport." In the words of Homer Simpson..."If something goes wrong at the plant, blame the guy who can't speak English."

3. Zzzzzzzzzzzzzzzz
I've got things to do. I've got two small children, a wife, I'm in graduate school, friends, work, and I'm a superhero in my spare time. I have no superpowers and I mostly save squirrels, but it still takes time. Baseball, for its pace, simply takes too long to attract new fans. We like things done yesterday here in America. We trash our old computers for faster ones, we want our cell phones to connect to the internet immediately, we want our news updated hourly, and we want SportsCenter updates every 10 minutes. Baseball is definitely the most throwback sport out of the four, but come on, unless you're there at the game and have great seats baseball literally reaches through the television and takes months off of your life. Speed up the game like I do in MVP Baseball 2005 and you'll end up playing a whole season in a week!

4. It's all about the Benjamins baby
Baseball is an arms race, literally and figuratively. I've added a link so you can see the amount of money some teams spend on their clubs compared to others. Frankly, it's bothersome. We're talking from the lowest payroll, Tampa Bay, to the top team in their OWN DIVISION, New York, a difference in close to $180 million dollars in salaries. That's a lot of cabbage. It seems like the worst teams aren't bad just because of poor management or performance, they just simply don't have the money to get good players and it lessens fairness in the sport. I would not watch baseball knowing damn well my team did not have a chance in hell to finish even 2nd in their own division year after year. Who wants to watch that? I've got an idea, maybe if Royals start paying teams in Rupees instead of dollars they can compete.

5. The fans and sports writers are obsessed with statistics
The last time I checked, sports weren’t solely about numbers. Numbers lie. Hell, 75% of know that statistics are right 34.3% of the time. This is where baseball begins to falter. The die-hards and the sports writers drool over statistics so much that it begins to determine how good a player was over the course of their career. I tried looking up statistics for baseball players just in terms of hitting and almost fell on the floor with what I saw (apparently you CAN have sex with a cow). After I put in the right URL I was still shocked at what I saw. There are statistics for outs, at bats per home run, caught stealing, intentional walks, sac flies, sac hits, hit by pitch, ops, RBI, home runs, runs created (what the hell is that), times on base, number of times nuts were scratched, hot dogs spilled, and grains of dirt. Compared to football, baseball has a million more ways to track every single play of every single everything it seems like. This has unfairly propelled some players like Craig Biggio into "Hall of Fame" status. Longevity does count when it comes to being elected to the Hall, but if your career cannot be summed up in one sentence, you simply don't be long. Craig Biggio falls into that, "well he finished first in games played in 2005 so he should be a Hall of Famer" cateogry. Puhlease.

6. Steroids
I don't believe steroids are the moral outrage some of the old timers are trying to make it. At worst, I think it's a shame that the sport has become about who has the best doctor and not the most talent. Nonetheless, baseball has been at the CENTER of a steroids scandal/investigation/media circus over the last four to five years and when a great player is about to break a hallowed record all anyone can talk about his the fact he was the center of a very good book called Game of Shadows. You didn't get this with Emmitt Smith breaking Sweetness' record, you didn't get this with Wayne Gretzky breaking records, and everyone embraced Michael Jordan breaking every playoff record possible.