Root, Root, Root for the Home Team

It’s Sunday night at the Rogers Centre in downtown Toronto. Inside the Blue Jays’ cavernous dome, the centerfield scoreboard flashes the estimated attendance at 13,094, though it seems like no more than 8,000 of the stadium’s 50,000 seats are filled. On ESPN’s broadcast, entire sections of chair backs are vacant, making the place look embarrassingly empty. From where I’m sitting, in the first base photo well, it looks deserted.

Yesterday, a double-header kicked off competition in Pool C of Major League Baseball’s 2009 World Baseball Classic. The twin bill attracted an electric and patriotic mass from Italy, the Americas, and Canada, filling even the upper decks. As a Media Relations intern watching from the press box, I was floored by the crowd’s diversity and universal zeal. But a day later, the energized horde has disappeared and only a few faithful fans are on hand for tonight’s matchup between the United States and Venezuela.

Seated in a field-level box above the kneeling photographers and me, there’s a small pocket of Team USA loyalists from Massachusetts. “Ben,” the roundest member of the group, wearing a faux-vintage Ted Williams jersey, and four of his blue-collar buddies from Revere drove nine hours and paid more than $100 a head to watch the Classic from the front row. During player introductions, as the teams exchange hats in a gesture of sportsmanship and solidarity, they wave their faded and yellowed American flag, giving extra loud shouts to first basemen Kevin Youkilis and second basemen Dustin Pedroia – U.S. players from their hometown Red Sox. By the third inning, there’s a trashcan’s worth of empty plastic cups at their feet and the men are seated, quiet and making small talk unrelated to the game, mostly about the Beantown/Bronx rivalry and which chicks in their section they would “do.”

Late in the game, the ESPN camera operator next to me spins around and points his lens at “Ben” and his gang. A network representative tells them they’ll be on national television when the Worldwide Leader in Sports comes back from its next commercial break and that they should look excited. They spring up, unfurl their flag, and chant “U-S-A! U-S-A!” The camera guy motions to them to get louder when his “On Air” indicator flashes red. After the brief commotion, ESPN cuts back to the players on the turf-grass and the five guys return to their beers and banter.

Watching this scene unfold, I realized I was staring directly at the condition of baseball in the United States and how most of our fans interact on an international stage. Since the inaugural World Baseball Classic was played in 2006, our nation’s sports media members have dwelled on the same few tired questions: Do U.S. sports fans care about this tournament? Will they be watching? Does this matter to them? As “Ben” and his company demonstrated, the sport-consumers of the United States have responded to all of the above with a loud and resounding “No.”

Though every spring, shortly after pitchers and catchers report to spring training, sports writers and baseball diehards gush over the game and its beauty, praising it annually as “America’s pastime,” that simply isn’t true. Realistically, it hasn’t been for decades. With the rise of the National Football League through television and a working class-friendly schedule, evidence makes it quite clear that football has long since replaced baseball as our nation’s most beloved sport. World Series’ TV ratings have been dwindling yearly and according to John Durand of Street & Smith’s Sport Business Journal, even viewership of localized networks in historically strong markets is down. Baseball’s sporting goods industry, which is dependant on the U.S.’s love of and participation in the game, reports that total participation in baseball declined by 10.3 percent among adults and youth between 2002 and 2007. According to Clive Russel, Managing Director of MLB Europe Ltd., ESPN’s ratings for the World Baseball Classic were slightly up in 2009, but only just edged out numbers for NBA regular season games. The undeniable truth, though hard to swallow, is that people in our country simply aren’t playing or watching baseball like they used to.

Certainly, the game has its passionate fans. Legions of avid supporters continue to build ranks in cities where the game’s tradition is deep and still thriving – Boston, New York, and Philadelphia to name a prominent few. But their infatuation is neither entirely for the game itself of baseball nor its players. As evidenced by “Ben’s” extra-loud shouts for “Pedroyah!” and “Youk!," die-hards are more impassioned by their regional allegiances than to the game itself. By wearing a Sox jersey and discussing New York-Boston during the Classic, he is indicating that his loyalty to Red Sox nation surpasses that to his own.
Dr. Stephen Mosher, professor of Sport Studies at Ithaca College, argues that Americans love baseball more than for its regional traditions, but also as a relic of Americana.
“The notion that America owns the game on the field has been completely destroyed,” he said. “Now, the game’s cultural significance is that of an artifact. It’s nostalgia.”

What captivates sports writers and the baseball’s most fanatical followers in the United States is more than what the game is between the foul poles, but what it represents. Baseball’s storied past and colorful mythology are so tightly intertwined with American history that the two are nearly inextricable. From the game’s folksy-sounding so-called inventor Abner Doubleday to the twentieth century heroes like Ruth, Gehrig, and Mays, baseball fans love the game for its olden days, purified by time and the fanciful tales we tell about it. There’s a reason why “Ben’s” jersey bears the number, not of a current player, but of a hitting savant who retired 49 years ago.

As our country’s passion for baseball fades, and we appear largely indifferent to international competition, the game is thriving overseas. Our sports media, so concerned with whether or not its audience was watching the Classic, engrossed by its affect the MLB season, failed to recognize that many other countries were mesmerized and rapt by it. By ignoring the international enthusiasm for the tournament, narcissistically consumed by our own involvement, the U.S. baseball media and its constituents squandered a unique opportunity to see the game in its many forms around the world.

In Japan, baseball has long been a cultural institution and a source of national pride. Nippon Professional Baseball, while only earning scant recognition from fans and team owners in the U.S., has been competing in packed arenas since 1950. During the Meiji Restoration, a mass cultural and societal shift during the late 1800’s, their nation embraced baseball with open arms. By fusing it with their culture’s traditional, self-sacrificing, Spartan-like warrior training known as Bushido, they created their own brand of baseball – besuboru. Today, according to Jim Small, Vice President of MLB’s Asian Operations and Managing Director of MLB Japan, the World Baseball Classic earned 46% TV ratings, a number in the same range as Super Bowl viewership in the United States.

“Of televisions actually in use at the time, more than 70% were tuned to the Classic,” says Small. “It is, without a doubt, one of the world’s most developed markets for baseball.”

Ichiro Suzuki, Seattle Mariners outfielder and future Hall of Famer, has long been a national icon in his native Japan. Upon winning the first of two Classic titles, Suzuki said to a reporter that he valued his experience in international competition more than any game he’d played in his eight-year career in the MLB.

Across the Gulf of Mexico, Latin American countries have long been recognized by the U.S. as sources of rich, young talent and home to crazed hooligan supporters. A quick glance at any Major League roster will reveal the many of the game’s most gifted players were born in the Dominican Republic, Cuba, Puerto Rico and Venezuela. Names like Ramirez, Rodriguez, Santana, and Ortiz have become the League’s superlative stars. The few who did watch the Classic’s games featuring South American teams saw throngs of wildly enthusiastic men, women, and children crammed into stadiums celebrating their brothers’ every at-bat. But while U.S. baseball followers may be distracted by the fervor of Latin American fans and their players’ flair, Dr. Mosher, argues their nations’ passion is very different from the our perspective.

“If you talk to the people who watch these games, you know it’s in their blood,” he says. “But the carnivals around the stadium, their cheering, it’s an excuse to escape from the extreme poverty in their lives. Their love for the game is more out of desperation than ours.”

Ismael Granadillo, born and raised in Caracas, Venezuela, was hired as a Media Relations representative for the national team on their trip to Ontario. Though attendance was mostly low for other nations, the seats along the third baseline were teeming with fans, faces painted boldly in yellow, blue and red, who had made the long trip from South America’s northernmost coast. Granadillo, in awe of the rowdy crowd, remarked at his nation’s passion for baseball and the sacrifices many made to show their support.

“To me and many others, baseball has always been an ally to solve problems, a valuable escape,” he says. “We played as a home team in every game in Toronto and in Miami, but I know some people gave up small fortunes to come. For them, this may be their life’s vacation.”

Like “Ben”, finishing Labatt after Labatt, preoccupied with AL East predictions, baseball fans in the U.S. missed the World Baseball Classic, ignoring a prime opportunity to witness the world’s finest players united on a global stage. Consumed by regional rivalry and nostalgic longing, we yawned at not just outs and innings, strikeouts and walk-offs, but also a chance to thoughtfully examine and discuss what baseball means to countries around the world.

While the U.S. obsesses over East Coast enmities and the endless NFL season, more impassioned nations have embraced baseball as an integral part of their culture and their lives. Though we once called the game our pastime, baseball truly belongs to the world.