America’s national pastime: from t-ball to the Majors, America loves baseball. Or is it loved? In a world where football and basketball are as popular as ever, baseball is slipping away, and no one has noticed. Americans have not stopped loving sports and are as eager to be excited by sports year-round as ever before. It seems the only reason people follow baseball is because it is played in the months when no other sports are on. So why has baseball lost our interest?

Since baseball season ended last November, the sports world has been taken over by the dabing and dancing of Cam Newton and Steph Curry. Whether through Odell Beckham Jr. after a touchdown grab, or on the court through LeBron James and his “Silencer” move after a big shot, theatrics have captured our attention. Theatrics have been around for ages, but are now more popular than ever, almost a side show. If you make a three-pointer it seems obligatory to shoot an imaginary arrow, or at least hold up three fingers and holster them like a gun. Every sack or first down has to have a dance attached and if you score it’s really on.

But in baseball it’s different. If one so much as flips his bat in celebration of a homerun it becomes a serious offense. Next thing you know, you have ruined the integrity and tradition of the game and past players are calling for your job. Goose Gossage would seem to be a really exciting guy from the outside: animal nickname, handlebar mustache, 103 mph fastball and Hall of Fame closer all adequately describe his career. But his more recent status is critic of today’s game, and hater of all that is fun. Flipping your bat in celebration is one of the “unwritten rules of baseball,” and has earned Jose Bautista the title of “disgrace to the game.” Bautista, one of the league’s most-feared hitters, often adds his form of theatrics after crushing a ball by flipping his bat as he begins his homerun trot, or as Gossage called it, “throwing his bat and acting like a fool.

Those who followed America’s “vacation” to Cuba last month were exposed to how little freedom Cuba actually gives its people. A group of six protesters disturbed ESPN’s post-game broadcast by showing their displeasure with the dictator that is holding their nation captive will probably never see daylight again. Whether, we, as Americans realized it or not, we witnessed another Tiananmen Square on live television. So how does a country lead by a dictator allow more freedom in baseball than the country who established freedom as a right? Bringing excitement back to baseball isn’t about making the game shorter and adding more rules, it’s about allowing excitement back in, and this comes through the players, and allowing them to have fun. Baseball is a game, and should be treated like a game, for the purpose of having fun.