Since 1876 when the MLB was founded, baseball has been widely considered America’s pastime and greatest sport. But it is no longer the 1800s and the world of sports is changing, arguably leaving baseball in the dust.
Today, the MLB continues to steadily decrease in popularity and attendance across the league. According to Forbes, 2018 was the first year MLB’s total attendance dropped below 70 million since 2003. While baseball analysts argue over various reasons for the low statistics, the numbers speak for themselves.
However, there is at least one place where baseball is avoiding a demise and experiencing an increase in popularity: Pleasant Valley High School.
Perhaps the success of the baseball team’s season and state run resulted in the noticeable increase in attendance. “It was crazy last year,” said Ryan Dolphin, a sophomore on the PV baseball team. “Our substate final in particular was packed.”
But junior baseball player Seth Clausen believes that the team’s success isn’t responsible for the high attendance. “Some sports, like football or basketball, will always get a crowd regardless of their team’s record,” Clausen said. “I feel like baseball is in that group, too.”
According to Forbes, the decrease in attendance and popularity at the professional level is affecting the game at the youth level as well. From 2002 to 2013, baseball saw a decrease of nine million players aged 7-17 to just above five million.
With the more than noticeable decrease of 41 percent, the numbers suggest a problem with fielding sufficient future team of Spartans.
But loyal Spartan baseball players like Dolphin feel baseball is here to stay. “It’s been too big for too long to just go away like that. Kids will always be interested in baseball no matter the time period,” he said.
So far, PV has been an anomaly to the slow decay of baseball, and Spartans like Dolphin and Clausen are confident in the sport and its resilience to stay that way.
