“The National Game has begun to
topple from its ancient pedestal, as the one-time fervid fans turn to new
sports…”
This
is how reporter Jack Kofoed begins his hard-hitting article entitled “A Dirge
for Baseball.” There is really nothing to differentiate this article from the
hundreds of other articles that consistently predict baseball’s imminent
demise. Yet it is very interesting for one particular reason. Of course, I will
naturally neglect to tell you about why this article is interesting for quite
some time, and don't you dare scroll ahead!
Kofoed
hits all the classic tropes. First, he decries the shortsightedness of
ownership for charging too much for tickets, thus driving the young fan away
from the game and ensuring that the young fan’s “hunger for baseball is not
nourished when it is most important.” He then laments the lack of superstar
talent in the game, particularly since the feats of some of the biggest stars
have recently been obscured by moral and legal mistakes. But most of all, from
Jack Kofoed’s perspective, baseball is threatened by the rise of more active
and readily accessible sports.
Though
Kofoed admits that baseball has grown in viewership and profitability over the
last several decades, it has not grown nearly as quickly as its younger rivals,
putting the economic future of the sport in doubt. Yet more insidious than
economic concerns, Kofoed charges that
“the spirit of the baseball fan
is flagging. There can be no question of that.”
Not
only do the fans no longer treat “the game with enormous seriousness,” the
players themselves, who once “lived and ate and slept baseball in the old days”
are now distracted by other pursuits.
These
are damning critiques, and are certainly echoed by other, less verbose
articles, thousands of which can be found with a simple Google search for the
depressingly clichéd phrase: “baseball is dying.” Jack Kofoed’s article is so
similar to the pabulum put out by writers and bloggers everywhere on the
internet that it is difficult to believe that it was published in Volume
228 of “The North American Review”… in July of 1929.
Consider
this: when Kofoed was penning his artful treatise as to why baseball would not be
long for the world, Babe Ruth was well on his way to blasting 46 home runs, Lefty
Grove was striking out 170 batters, and the Chicago Cubs were far and away the
best team in the National League.
Craig
Calcaterra, the blogger-in-chief for Hardballtalk, wrote in response to a
particularly egregious modern day article:
“The first professional baseball team was
established in 1869. Two weeks later someone probably wrote a column
about how baseball was dying, on its way out and utterly utterly doomed.”
As
Kofoed has shown, Calcaterra was not exaggerating by much at all.
These
days the common charge is that, thanks to its strong national TV ratings and
insane hoopla, football has not only become the most popular sport in America,
it will quickly render baseball irrelevant. The challenges seem dire, but less
so when compared to equally dire predictions made in 1929.
The
rival sports that Kofoed believed were fast overtaking baseball in 1929? Tennis
and Golf. Yes, golf, that rousing spectacle of wealthy men smacking balls
across the lawn and chasing them down at a leisurely ramble, was to supplant
baseball.
Kofoed
admitted that,
“the impossibility of massing spectators in a stadium or
grandstand, means that golf can never compete with baseball as a paying
spectacle”
But
as a participatory sport, Kofoed expected the hundreds of private and public
courses would combine with the rise of tennis at schools to destroy baseball’s
potential fan base.
Clearly,
the situation in 1929 is very different from that which baseball faces today,
but it is nevertheless instructive to see that competing sports have never
seriously threatened baseball. Mainly because, as static and unchanging as the
game appears on the field, the dynamics of baseball viewership and marketing
have always evolved to meet new challenges.
One
thing that did change about the experience of the average baseball fan during
the course of Kofoed’s lifetime was the ticket prices, which rose from the
“reasonable fee” of “two bits” to the apparently prohibitive cost of “fifty or
seventy-five cents.” However, that increase did not drive young people away
from baseball and towards other sports as he feared. Even the Great Depression,
which was to begin with the Wall Street Crash barely three months after this
article was published, failed to dampen the public’s enthusiasm for baseball.
As
desirable as 75-cent tickets may seem with tickets averaging $26.91 last year,
it is worth noting that the average NFL ticket last year was $76.47. It is true
that the economics and season lengths of the two sports are sufficiently
different as to render per game cost comparisons irrelevant. Depressingly,
however, most of the modern day “Football is King and Baseball is Mercifully Dying” (a real article written by real people) rants focus on how baseball ratings
for nationally televised game trail football telecasts. These articles ignore
the fact that the vast majority of baseball games are televised on the thirty
(incredibly profitable) regional networks.
The
financial outlook for baseball in 1929 was strong, even acknowledging the
substantial hit that baseball, along with the rest of the country, was to take
during the great depression. In 2012 baseball’s financial prospects are even
better, and despite the challenges presented by up and coming sports, baseball
will undoubtedly persevere, just as it did when challenged by tennis and golf
(still giggling about that one) in the 1920s.
Financial
and external problems pose no threat to the game now, just as they did not in
Kofoed’s time. The internal problems, the “bankruptcy in player material” that
Kofoed observed, seem comical in hindsight. The 1930’s produced some of the
best players in the long and glorious history of our game, and if tennis, golf
and boxing could not turn Lou Gehrig, Jimmie Foxx, Hank Greenberg, Joe
Dimaggio, Dizzy Dean and Bob Feller away from baseball, then I sincerely doubt
that football, basketball, hockey and soccer will rob us of a future generation
of stars.
As
to the moral and legal problems that baseball was struggling with in the
1920’s, I should think that most of you would have guessed that the Black Sox
scandal of 1919 and the 8 expulsions that followed were the cause of Kofoed’s
loss of confidence. In modern times, labor strife and steroid abuse have both
damaged the integrity of the game. However, with the harsh lessons of the
strike of 1994, and the embarrassment of the fallout from the steroid years
fixed firmly in the minds of management and players, it is my hope that neither
scandal will threaten baseball’s future.
What
is the lesson of this one obscure article that I found buried in the dusty
crevices of Jstor? Some would argue that this merely proves that it is never
too early to sound the alarm! Or, more reasonably, perhaps Kofoed’s article
from 1929, and the passel of drech from the internet, show that baseball is far
stronger than any of us expected.
(Due to copyright concerns,
I regretfully cannot provide a link to Kofoed’s article, therefore unless you
have access to Jstor through a scholarly institution, you will just have to
take my word on the content of the article.)
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