With the recent start to the NFL season causing the usual frenzy it does every year, it seems as if America's favorite pastime has entered the shadows. Sports networks, such as ESPN, spew out a constant flow of football highlights, updates, and injury reports, and save just a sliver of airtime to discuss baseball. Of course, most people today would argue that football has taken the crown from baseball, becoming the new favorite pastime in America. It is easy to see why baseball has been put on the back burner, despite it remaining virtually the same sport as it has always been. What it all boils down to is the ability of football to capture the attention of its viewers compared to baseball. The attention spans of Americans seem to become perpetually shorter and shorter, and many people are more enthralled with the pace in which football is played. However, regardless of the media's bias and all the people who claim otherwise, baseball is still the national pastime, and believe it or not, it's still baseball season, too.
For the last 139 years, baseball has been a reliable source of entertainment for Americans. Since 1961, baseball players have muscled through 162 regular season games over the course of a six-month season, which equates to an average of 27 games a month compared to football's average of only four games a month. While football is definitely a more dangerous sport, the physical wear and tear of playing baseball almost every day for six months (often more including spring training and the postseason) is equally, if not more, strenuous on a player's body. Whereas professional football games are almost always played on Sunday, Monday, or Thursday, baseball games are played every day of the week from the season's start to finish. When it comes to entertaining, baseball never disappoints in being consistent. Unlike football, there is more time spent actually playing the sport rather than talking about the sport.
None of this is to say that football is not an entertaining or worthy sport; it is. But it lacks an overall depth that baseball possesses. There is no clock in baseball. The game is simply between two teams and not between two teams and time. Whichever team wins does so by being superior in its play instead of being a master of the clock. In a close game of football with less than two minutes left, if the leading team has possession of the ball, it is almost a guaranteed win due to the ability to run out the clock. In a down to the wire baseball game, every pitch matters, and the only way to seal a win is to maintain the same superior level of play.
Even the way in which baseball is played is more interesting. In baseball, the defense initiates the game (the pitcher throws the ball to the batter), and while it is a team sport, it largely consists of one-on-one matchups. Each player is accountable for their own play, whether or not it is helpful or detrimental to the overall team. More importantly, with such great advances in the field of baseball statistics, it is now possible to quantify exactly how much worth a player is to their team. That cannot be done in football.
As for baseball in 2015, the game itself is thriving; this particular season has been full of surprising underdogs rising to the top of their divisions. Also, baseball welcomed its new commissioner, Rob Manfred, in January, and he is likely to bring an interesting perspective on where this cornerstone sport will go in this rapidly changing world. Regardless of whatever new innovations are brought to the sport, one thing is for certain: Baseball is an integral part of American culture. It has a history that is woven with this great nation and has overcome many obstacles and broken barriers along the way.
In January 1942, America was only a month into World War II, and the state of the country, let alone baseball, was in turmoil. Many baseball players joined the military to help in the war effort, and it was questionable as to whether or not baseball would continue. Around this time, President Roosevelt wrote to MLB Commissioner Landis, "I honestly feel that it would be best for the country to keep baseball going." Baseball would go on, just as it had for 70 years before and just as it has for 70 years since.
