Chass : Soccer Boots Baseball In NYT

Would have been perfect had it ended, "And get off my damn lawn, you damn kids."

 

That's pretty much dead on.

 

Reminds of a "what grinds my gears" kind of column my similarly older "Sports editor emeritus (term mine)" handed in about a month ago in which he bitched that ESPN dared waste Bottom Line space on scores from foreign soccer leagues.

 

"Emeritus" reflects honor and respect. Murray Chase earns neither.

 

Baseball, which was heating up in the final week of the second month of its season, was not the featured sport in the section that had long featured baseball. Suddenly soccer was king.

Sure, it was heating up in the final week of the second month of a SIX month regular season. And then the playoffs.

What precious coverage did we all live without for those nine days?

 

To be fair though, would ESPN be putting those scores up if they weren't broadcasting those leagues?

 

ESPN is not broadcasting many of those leagues.

 

And they ran NHL scores, right?

 

I have to admit I was a little annoyed a few days ago when ESPN's home page had a lone cricket score on the banner scoreboard.

I suspect it gave Wright Thompson a nice opportunity to re-Tweet one of his old stories, though. He's known to do that.

 

It's stories like this that reaffirm why I don't like the baseball establishment. Old men complaining that young people don't watch an old game.

 

I agree with many of the points here (I love the Premier League, and increased TV soccer) but MLB (and MILB) are about the only pro sports where you actually see young people and families at the games. People talk about the so-called "death" of baseball when in fact its popularity is at an all-time high, considering the many levels (MLB, MILB, college, summer wood bat) it's flourishing at.

 

MLB certainly has a strong regional appeal. That's why playoff ratings are so bad - people drop away as their teams exit stage left.

I wish it could find a way to better market its individual stars. We are reaching a time where there will soon be Hall of Famers that casual fans haven't heard of - Trevor Hoffman and Scott Rolen come to mind as possibilities.

For decades, baseball cards did the trick. MLB needs to find a new way to infiltrate the hearts and minds of young people with the same degree of success, now that baseball cards are kind of by the wayside.