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Kenyon GS: Baseball striking out — the demise of America’s pastime

I have never played a game of baseball in my life. Not pee-wee, not Little League, not even an impromptu inning during recess. I was the boy who flat-out protested a game of catch with his father — something akin to the guilt inspiring Kevin Costner’s introspective journey in “Field of Dreams.” The only difference is that I never found a calling to come around to the game — or to construct a baseball diamond in my backyard. I have, however, resided in baseball’s hometown of Cooperstown, New York, for the last decade, and having formerly worked within the hallowed National Baseball Hall of Fame and Museum, borne witness to the transitional nature of the game’s heart and soul.

Some of you undoubtedly have completed the pilgrimage to my hometown. Cooperstown’s lack of adjacency to any major thoroughfare and limited seasonal offerings preclude a regular flow of travelers from nonchalantly stopping in the village. To come to Cooperstown, visitors must dedicate their will and their day. With just 2,200 annual residents, it is no challenge to measure the volume of tourists that flock to Cooperstown’s streets as the temporary population regularly swells and shifts by the thousands from week to week. Working within the “belly of the beast” — the Hall of Fame — I met thousands of individuals over the course of eight years with the organization. Baseball fans paying homage to a cornerstone of their childhood — or adulthood — from all corners of the country and beyond, with spouses, children, grandchildren and friends in tow, all found themselves within my workplace.

My first days with baseball were marked by bygone times: a soaring economy, Bush 43 delivering the perfect first pitches and a younger fan base. Times changed, however. As is widely agreed upon by locals, the high-water mark for the Hall of Fame was the summer 2007 induction featuring the Baltimore Orioles’ Cal Ripken Jr. and the San Diego Padres’ Tony Gwynn. Like the economic trends of latter ’07, the trends in tribute gradually faltered. I use no specific set of metrics to present my case, other than the contact I had with arriving fans from year to year. The all-too-regular observations of watching grandparents relish with delight the Hall’s majesty as their grandchildren tweeted on from behind — or worse yet, sealed out the world with a pair of earbuds — began to speak volumes on the aging soul of baseball fandom. While attendance numbers indicated shifts in the pilgrimage to “Baseball’s Mecca,” the more apparent shift was in attitude — particularly along generational lines.

Baseball’s loyal fans grew dramatically older after 2007. Compared to other athletic franchises, baseball appeared antiquated and slow. In the Cooperstown region, many of my peers, and perhaps yours, too, advanced through their secondary education playing soccer or, in the larger districts, football. When I attended Spring Hill College in southern Alabama, it was no surprise that I witnessed how football had eclipsed all other athletics. America’s pastime was indeed becoming a different concept: a past time. How could baseball position itself in an increasingly youthful and expedited world? How could baseball, with rules and regulations that seemingly prevent a speedy game, appeal to America’s youth who protest an irregular Facebook outage? How many innings? Infield warm-ups? In fact, I never made it to a ninth inning of a game, and I was only watching from my backyard, which abuts Doubleday Field.

My colleagues and I would jest that older baseball fans became young again when they walked through the doors of the Hall of Fame. They did. But the same did not necessarily apply to their children. With my own accumulation of age, wisdom and experience, I could see in my latter years that a disconnect was forming in baseball. America’s youth had new athletic allegiances in mind. The regular flow of NFL attire through the front doors of baseball’s home suggested this altering of allegiances — and seemed gauche, moreover. Kids were increasingly disassociated from the realities of the grandeur and history surrounding where they stood. In the Hall’s 75 years of existence, the number of accomplished athletes, political figures and noteworthy individuals who have walked the rooms and grounds is staggering. President Obama visited the Hall just this summer in a photo op to push New York tourism. Those that can take note of this, however, are increasingly dwindling in numbers.

For a sport that loves to reminisce, baseball reminisces perhaps too much, and glorifies an era in America when the socioeconomic makeup of our society was dramatically different. Who better than America’s youth to serve as a litmus test of this suggestion? MLB Commissioner Bud Selig is not exactly the pulse of America’s youth, after all.

Baseball is aging, as are all concepts in our changing world. While my testimony to a change in America’s pastime is but a mere observation from baseball’s cradle, what happens on baseball’s most sacred ground simply foreshadows what is to come for the sport — and that is okay. While Costner may have needed to play catch with his father in “Field of Dreams,” I do not have to do the same. Many of us do not. The debate remains over the pulse of baseball: whether it is slowing, or even there at all. Make no mistake, baseball still has a solid fan base, but it is one seemingly drawn along generational lines. As this year’s World Cup drew more domestic viewers than ever before, and as our national makeup continuously shifts, America’s pastime will find new contenders in the coming decades.

In Cooperstown, the winds of change are picking up: change for MLB, fans and the heartbeat of my hometown.

 

Ian Kenyon GS is a Cooperstown native, now studying public affairs with the Taubman Center for Public Policy and American Institutions. 

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