George Will of political pundit fame also brandishes himself as a true blue baseball fan and has wrote about the game for many years now. One of his latest opinion pieces in The Washington Post has as us here at BP not just scratching our collective heads but outright banging them against the walls (which is definitely going to leave a mark).
He started the article talking about how the game become too long, but also cited the decrease in action, as one third of at bats end in walks, strikeouts, and home runs. In addition, he discussed the shift and advanced athleticism that turned hits into outs, and thus also contributed to a decreased level of overall game action. For these reasons alone, Mr. Will decreed the fan base deteriorated from 79.5 million in 2007 to 64.5 million in 2022. What Mr. Will conveniently leaves out are the other forces in play that have reduced fan attendance. We write about those other factors regularly here in BP since our inception, but originally in this blog post: https://baseballpuristcom.wordpress.com/2023/03/30/opening-day-and-shorter-games/
Some of the factors Mr. Will chose to overlook to explain fans lack of interest in the sport include:
a) Corona Virus – Baseball was essentially closed for business in 2020, and 2021 was not much better. By 2022, things certainly lifted in terms of the pandemic, but it was far from over and for the most vulnerable of fans, going to a crowded ballpark and exposing themselves to possible infection was not an option. Therefore, if MLB had done nothing this year (not changed one rule) the attendance numbers will surely go up, but we guarantee that this will not stop them from taking a victor lap at year-end and proclaim that the new rules saved the sport.
b) Decreasing Size of Ballparks – Although not mentioned by the media, ballpark sizes have decreased over time. See our prior post that looks at the shrinking stadium capacity since 2000: https://baseballpuristcom.wordpress.com/2023/04/28/maybe-size-matters/
c) The lack of competitive balance in the game today that makes for a league of haves and have nots, is not a dynamic that will stimulate a good portion of the fans who have to endure through one endless losing season after another. See our post: https://baseballpuristcom.wordpress.com/2023/05/24/mlb-competitive-balance-not-so-much/
d) The overall cost to attend a game. We doubt Mr. Will would even flinch at the cost of attending a game, but for the average Jane and Joe that rising cost does make a difference.
e) Rise of other entertainment options – The world is changing rapidly and so are our viewing options. There are a myriad of viewing choices and today’s youth is not limited to three networks and public television (yes that was the viewing options some time ago). The rise of the internet and mobile phones have changed our options, and the world of entertainment is more fragmented than ever, and it is not going back.
There are many other reasons we could cite for the decline in fan attendance, but for now let us just say that Mr. Will has a much shorter list than us in terms of what ails the game. Ultimately, we disagree completely with Mr. Will’s contention that radically changing the rules is the proper way to stop and restore an eroding fan base.
Back though to Mr. Will and his uh, argument that the game has been resurrected. He devotes one sentence to note that there has been an increase in action, since scoring is up over the first 383 games from the prior year, which was roughly the first month of the season. He cites no numbers, just that there has been an increase. How much Mr. Will? Is it up 1 run, 100 or a 1,000?
He then extolls the virtues of shortening of the game by 25 minutes and literally yelling from the rooftops how all the measures instituted by MLB has saved baseball. To quote Mr. Will, “Before this season’s resurrection-through-reform, baseball was tumbling toward steadily decreased significance. Sensibilities change; entertainments are perishable”.
This article was published on May 5th. After barely a month into the season, Mr. Will decided the implementation of pitch clocks and the elimination of the shift resurrected the game of baseball, and reversed its downward slide. How can one conclude that the game has been resurrected? We ask that question, since he provides no data to show that fans are returning to watch the sport either in person at the stadium or that there is increased viewership. He bases his conclusions purely based on his own words and clear biasness. As we have noted repeatedly in past posts, whatever MLB needs to do to appeal to the masses is good for the game and changing rules that are the bedrock and soul of baseball are merely collateral damage. Mr. Will is clearly on board with the MLB hierarchy, and happy to “carry their water” as evidenced by his opinion piece.
Keep in mind that Mr. Will’s piece is in the Opinion section of the Wall Street Journal, so one needs to take what he says with an incredibly large grain of salt, since it is after all just his opinion. Mr. Will is famous for his punditry, but that does not make his opinion any more valid than yours or ours. Ultimately, even opinions should be backed with fact and not just wishful thinking. This piece is heavy on wishful thinking but extremely lacking in facts.
We will leave you with some real facts and not opinion that you can look up at Baseball Reference and you can judge for yourself about the rule changes. Mr. Will cites that the game reached its zenith in 2007, when attendance peaked at 79.5 million fans. What he fails to mention is that the average length of a game back in 2007 was 2 hours 55 minutes. Last year in 2022, the average game lasted 3 hours and six minutes. Therefore, a grand total of an 11 minute increase so incensed the fans that they turned away from the game over that 15-year span.
Furthermore, the average length of a game as of this writing is 2 hours 39 minutes. The last time the average game time was that short was in 1984, when the attendance only totaled 44.7 million. There were though only 26 teams back in 1984, so for comparison purposes if we recalculated 1984 attendance figures using the present 30 team structure, this would yield an estimated attendance of 51.5 million. Therefore, MLB’s one sided belief that focusing mostly on the time element of a game will lead to droves of fans coming to the ballpark feels misplaced based on prior year’s game lengths and historical attendance figures. Just don’t tell George Will.
Baseball Purist 
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