It’s not often that I read an article in The Onion with anything more than a laugh.
But this weekend, I found something on the website that left me with not a laugh but a sigh. An article, titled “Nation Gathers Around Radio Set To Listen To Big Ball Game,” describes this year’s World Series in the context of 1940s America. A country united by sports. A country united by baseball. A country where it actually matters that the Texas Rangers and St. Louis Cardinals are playing each other for the greatest achievement in the game.
It paints a picture of sports in a country we once were, but are no more.
The article’s satire is sobering. I’m a diehard baseball fan, so I understood the point the author was trying to make. Baseball no longer means that much to most people in America.
Sunday night was game four of the World Series. I’d missed most of the game, so when I entered the spacious ground-floor lounge of my dorm, it was with the expectation that at least a few fans would be there to fill me in on the action I’d missed.
But the lights were off. The lounge was empty. I had no one with whom to talk about the game.
I watched the game in silent revelry. I was enraptured as Derek Holland stepped to the mound in the ninth inning. I was drawn in as closer Neftali Feliz nearly blew the Rangers’ 4-0 lead. And I exhaled when Albert Pujols, the greatest hitter of our generation, was retired on a lazy fly ball with the game on the line.
But I watched it as I never want to watch a game. Alone.
The World Series is the pinnacle of achievement in the longest-enduring major sport we have. But most people I know don’t even know the Series is going on, let alone who is playing. TV ratings have dipped to the lowest they’ve been in years.
Too many people write off sports fans as weirdos, passionate about events with no direct impact on real life. Some people are too busy to care about sports. Some people just don’t care.
But the gratification in being a sports fan isn’t in the individual moments but the shared ones.
Perhaps the greatest moment from the time I lived in India last year was watching the Cricket World Cup. Much like The Onion-ized families of 1940s America, families around India gathered around TVs and watched the championship match intently. As India clinched its victory over Sri Lanka, the country celebrated together. After weeks of self-contained tension, passion in its purest, happiest form burst through. Many of the people celebrating didn’t understand cricket at all. But when your friends care and your family cares, you care too. That’s why everyone in India watched the Cricket World Cup. Everyone watches when everyone cares.
You won’t get that scope of celebration in baseball anymore. Because in 2011, we may be Dodgers fans, or Giants fans, or, like me, Cubs fans. But we’re not all really baseball fans. Too many of us are merely fans of teams and players, not the sports themselves.
I can’t make you watch the World Series as it nears what’s sure to be an exciting conclusion.
But I’ll be watching. Because I care.
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I think the larger point is that yes…sports, the media and the face of American culture has changed. The internet has splintered American culture. As Seth Godin talks about in his new book, “We are All Weird” there aren’t mass markets anymore as your reference to listening to baseball is a good example, but there are a bunch of niche markets of passionate people who have a weird obsession that binds them together. It’s a sign of prosperity – at least in terms of the abundance of alternative distractions available. Luckily, technology these days enables these groups to come together amid the myriad of distractions and causes to rally around.
“Because I care.”
…about stupid sh!t, instead of something important or at least getting laid. Every moment in front of the tv is shaved 18 year old you are not having.
The problem with baseball ratings is the announcers of the World Series. Joe Buck is like listening to paint dry. But don’t tell FOX Sports that, they think he is the greatest and always put him on their main sporting venues ( It makes him look good and hurts their ratings). In todays modern electronic world The Neilson Rating Company should be able to tell if people are listening to the station they are watching.
I am not sure I agree. I appreciate the sentiment, but much of current American sport is in essence divisive. Fans have deep passion for their team, and once their team bows out, what is left is little. Maybe if their rival is still in the reckoning, there is some burning passion to see them lose and be humiliated, but apart from that, state, college, clubs- all of it, they create these in-groups. I am never a baseball fan. I am a RedSox fan, a Mets fan, a Yankees fan.
Seldom is the country united in backing one team (except during the Olympics) like they would in Soccer or Cricket so…I disagree that the country has ever been “united” around baseball in a true sense.