Baseball permeates American culture. Growing up, we hear names like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Ted Williams, Sandy Koufax, Jackie Robinson, and more. We’re told these are the people to emulate and that they represent all that is great about America. But nowadays it seems that other sports have been taking the mantle as our National Pastime. The Superbowl, March Madness, and NBA Championship dominate the television ratings every year while the World Series continuously underperforms. However, there are a few reasons why baseball will always be the sport that truly represents America:

Inclusion

On April 15, 1947, Jackie Robinson stepped between the foul lines at Ebbett’s field in Brooklyn and became the first African-American athlete to ever play in an American professional sports event. Later that year at a game in Cincinnati, as boos and hisses rained down from the crowd on the young second baseman, shortstop Pee Wee Reese -- the captain of Robinson’s team, the Brooklyn Dodgers – walked across the diamond and put his arm around Robinson, silencing the crowd. This act of unity began to spread and people began to appreciate Robinson, not just as a great baseball player and as a great human being, but as a symbol for racial progress in America and a leader of the civil rights movement. Today, every team in the MLB has honored Robinson by retiring his number “42” so that no player can ever wear that number again, except for once a year on the anniversary of that fateful day when all of baseball wears his number, and a “Civil Rights Game,” is played every year where each team represents a team from the Negro Leagues.

This legacy of inclusion is still being forged today. The General Manager of the Oakland A’s, Billy Beane, was recently named the “Ambassador of Inclusion,” by Major League Baseball, with the intention of creating outreach and understanding with the LGBTQIA+ community. Since the implementation of this program, baseball has seen the first openly gay player in the minor league system (a player for the Milwaukee Brewer’s Helena Montana affiliate, David Denson).

History

Baseball, like this country itself, can trace its roots back to the 18^th century when players would get together and play a “baseball-like game” using improvised bats and balls. According to Baseball Reference, the first official team was the New York Knickerbockers in 1845, which changed the game to the Knickerbocker rules, more closely related to the game that is played today. Over the history of Major League Baseball, the close relationship between what was happening in the sport and what was happening in society was obvious. The Civil Rights Movement was mirrored in baseball as well as various cultural movements of every era.

The Drug War

Over the past few years, Major League Baseball has instituted very strict drug policies, possibly – and this is just conjecture – to mirror the extremely harsh drug penalties that we find in Federal Law. A player caught using steroids, or any “performance enhancing drug,” like Alex Rodriguez, can be suspended for an indefinite period of time depending on how big a violation of the drug policy it was. Sometimes these penalties can reach unbelievable levels for people who only barely violate them. For instance, Braves outfielder Cameron Maybin was suspended 25 games for taking Adderall to control his ADD, a legitimate medical condition verified by multiple doctors. Likewise, in Montana, a woman was sentenced to twelve years in prison for selling $31 worth of marijuana. And this is just one example: there are thousands of people behind bars right now for relatively minor non-violent drug offenses.

Income Inequality

In the MLB, unlike any other professional sports league, there is no salary cap for teams, therefore any team can spend as much as they want. However, this also puts teams in smaller markets at a disadvantage because unlike the NFL where there is a strict policy of money-sharing between owners, the MLB is a capitalist paradise with some teams’ payrolls towering over other teams'. In 2015, the team with the highest payroll was the Los Angeles Dodgers, with a payroll nearing 300 million dollars while the lowest team – the Miami Marlins—had a payroll of less than 70 million. This is highly reminiscent of the current economic state of the US where, according to the Guardian, the top .1 percent of America’s people due to income, have as much wealth as the bottom 90% combined. And, as in Major League Baseball, these numbers are growing every year.

Political Unawareness

C.J. Wilson, a pitcher for the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, said in an interview with Jeff Pearlman of ESPN that no one on his team cares about politics: “There are two reasons. One, there's a general lack of education among us. But two -- and most important -- you're talking about a population that makes a ton of money, so the ups and downs of the economy don't impact whether we're getting paid. Therefore, we often don't care.” This political apathy amongst baseball players matches that of the American people. The election that Wilson was discussing in this interview was the 2008 presidential election, where, according to the census bureau, only 58.2% of eligible citizens voted. This means that a staggering 41.2 percent of eligible voters stayed home on this particular election night, and it was still one of the highest voter turnout rates in recent memory. Nothing says America quite like not caring about American politics, and Major League Baseball clearly has that down.