4 x Coach of Year and 3 x World Series Champ Weighs In
Comments
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In the 90s and early 2000s, it seemed like it was more of a cool, young(er) sport. I remember spending and wasting a lot of time on beisbol cards from about 1987-1992 as well. There was also more offense/HR's, and let's face it, there were more native born Americans playing, both black and white. People are tribal, even if they claim not to be (look at Trump's popularity). Nothing against Hugh or Yu Darvish, or whatever his name is, but it's hard to get as attached to him as Randy Johnson 20 years ago. He's half Iranian and half Japanese. He probably speaks broken English. He's not as marketable.
I think the steroids as well as the subsequent lack of offense over the past 10 or 12 years have hurt it as well. I know this board loves roids and cheats, but a lot of people don't like cheaters who bulked up from 205 to 240 and hit 60 homers instead of 43.
Who are the stars now? Bryce Harper? Total douche. Mike Trout? He seems like an okay guy but he's not a natural star.
As for black kids, I think it's either football or basketball for most of them, and it has been that way for at least 30 years. To that point, I looked at an old h.s. yearbook from 20 years ago (I'm not middle aged yet SFJ). There was one black kid (who I knew) on the baseball teams (both varsity and j.v.) out of probably 30 kids.
The basketball team was 75% black if not more and the football team was 50-60% black. The school was about 30% black overall, maybe a little higher than that. -
stars in baseball are generally beloved in their own town probably more than a football or basketball player and casually followed around the country. A product of baseball nowadays being as I said regional.Fire_Marshall_Bill said:In the 90s and early 2000s, it seemed like it was more of a cool, young(er) sport. I remember spending and wasting a lot of time on beisbol cards from about 1987-1992 as well. There was also more offense/HR's, and let's face it, there were more native born Americans playing, both black and white. People are tribal, even if they claim not to be (look at Trump's popularity). Nothing against Hugh or Yu Darvish, or whatever his name is, but it's hard to get as attached to him as Randy Johnson 20 years ago. He's half Iranian and half Japanese. He probably speaks broken English. He's not as marketable.
I think the steroids as well as the subsequent lack of offense over the past 10 or 12 years have hurt it as well. I know this board loves roids and cheats, but a lot of people don't like cheaters who bulked up from 205 to 240 and hit 60 homers instead of 43.
Who are the stars now? Bryce Harper? Total douche. Mike Trout? He seems like an okay guy but he's not a natural star.
As for black kids, I think it's either football or basketball for most of them, and it has been that way for at least 30 years. To that point, I looked at an old h.s. yearbook from 20 years ago (I'm not middle aged yet SFJ). There was one black kid (who I knew) on the baseball teams (both varsity and j.v.) out of probably 30 kids.
The basketball team was 75% black if not more and the football team was 50-60% black. The school was about 30% black overall, maybe a little higher than that.
See Felix Hernandez in Seattle, Mike Trout in LA, or David Ortiz in Boston. Nationally, people may gawk at their numbers but it's still not must see tv by the nature of the game.
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Baseball is so boring that this thread about race lost my interest before the end of page one.
