National Pastime or Past Its Time?

Ron Guidry

It was about 10:45 pm last night and I just finished watching Around The Horn, Pardon The Interruption and First Take on my DVR when I remembered the MLB All Star game was on.  I quickly turned to the station in time to see Neil Diamond singing ‘Sweet Caroline’ and the crowd singing along with him.  It seemed like a nice moment and I thought they were going to go into a commercial break but then I heard the beginning of Metallica’s, ‘Enter The Sandman’ and I knew Mariano Rivera was about to come out of the bullpen for the last time in an All Star game.  As Rivera runs from the bullpen to the pitching mound, the entire crowd and both teams stood up and applauded Mariano’s entrance (everyone but two Red Sox players, who I don’t fault at all).  Mariano was the only player on the field.  It was just him and the fans…………

I remember when baseball had that same distinction with me.  I remember when baseball stood alone to me as the sport of all sports.  My foster-father used to watch channel 11, WPIX in NYC, every evening and I would see Rick Cerone, Reggie Jackson, Greg Nettles and the rest of my Yankee heroes.  The New York Giants didn’t exist to me, the Knicks were, well the Knicks.  It was just baseball to me back then, nothing else.  I collected baseball cards, I knew all the players on all the teams.  I knew the managers, the stats and most of all the records.  I would come home from school, grab my local newspaper, The Daily News, and go right to the boxscores to see who did what, the night before.  My interest in baseball was always more than the other sports and then came 1998.

1998 was the year everything in baseball changed.  1998 is when the innocence of the game would forever be lost.   That is the summer when Mark McGuire and Sammy Sosa battled to break Roger Maris’ 1961 regular season record of 61 home runs.  It was an epic chase of the record with McGuire ultimately out slugging Sosa 70 to 66, and a new home run king was born.  McGuire’s reign as regular season home run champ was short-lived though, when Barry Bonds hit 73 homers in 2001.  These should have been exciting times for baseball but these records were tainted with players taking steroids and other performance enhancing drugs to improve their ability and/or help them recover for injury quicker.  This changed baseball forever because it’s one of the few sports where numbers and records matter.  Suddenly records that were around for decades were being broken and broken again.  Guys that never hit fifty home runs their entire career were suddenly hitting that many in one season (Brady Anderson 51).  All that was sacred to me was lost!

So while watching the game last night, Tim McCarver says baseball is still “America’s Natonal Pastime”.  I pondered that for a minute and thought, “No, baseball is past its prime”.  The passion isn’t there anymore and not just from me; ratings have been declining steadily for the past decade or so.  Fan attendence is also declining at stadiums all across the country.  To top it off baseball is not doing a good job of marketing its young players or trying to get the younger generation interested in it.  If baseball isn’t careful it’s going to go the way of boxing and horse racing.  Man I long for the days of Goose Goosage, Dave Raghetti and Louisiana Lighting.. Bring back the innocence!