America's Present Time

In the shadow of the Super Bowl, Spring Training has begun.

It’s easy to overlook the unofficial start of summer when football has posted record ratings. Football is uniquely suited to take advantage of technological advances such as high-definition television and instant replay, which accentuate the violent collisions and highlight exceptional passing plays like never before. In recent seasons, the NFL has combined these technical innovations with soap-opera level storylines involving interesting and flawed personalities such as Michael Vick, Ben Roethlisberger, and Brett Favre. Football has become America’s ultimate reality show.

As a sport, baseball cannot compare with football’s brutality; as George Carlin humorously noted, baseball is a pastoral game with a seventh inning stretch in which the defense initiates play and the only way to score is to be safe. The lack of an organized clock locks the potential viewer into an open-ended situation, and the rise of both advanced sabermetrics, which has led to an increase in strikeouts and walks, and bullpen specialization has lengthened the game and made many casual viewers believe the game to be boring.

It seems that America’s national pastime has been overtaken in America’s national imagination. Yet in the last twenty years, baseball has been more American than ever before.

In baseball, offensive statistics rose dramatically beginning in 1993, eventually shattering all sorts of records and shifting the paradigm of economic success before the sport was humbled by the revelation of unenforced laws in the late 2000s, which coincided with baseball’s economic bubble bursting.

Stop me if you’ve heard that before.

It should not be a coincidence that baseball almost exactly mirrored American capitalism, because baseball best reflects America’s economic structure. Both political liberals and political conservatives have reasons to complain about baseball, much as both complain about America.
Liberals decry the lack of a salary cap that allows baseball to avoid the parity trend of other sports and field dominant organizations. The New York Yankees are the symbol of unfettered capitalism, throwing dollars around with such wanton disregard that smaller market teams have little chance of signing an enticing free agent that the Yankees desire. Other big market teams, such as the Boston Red Sox and Philadelphia Phillies, can compete, but there is seemingly little chance for a small market team to win a championship unless they aim to win one year and then sell off their assets immediately after their victory.

In response to this, baseball executives instituted a luxury tax that financially penalized teams spending above a certain fixed amount; that financial penalty would then be spread out among the small market teams to help them compete. The Yankees are the primary target of this virtual bill of attainder, but other organizations have paid miniscule amounts in the past.

Yet the results of this tax have angered conservatives, who invoke the specter of Ronald Reagan’s fictitious “welfare queen” in light of recently released documents that show the owners of the Pittsburgh Pirates and Florida Marlins, among other small market teams, pocketing the tax revenues rather than investing it in their teams. Conservatives also point out that the Steinbrenner family and their limited partners that own the Yankees are not even close to the wealthiest owners in sports, and that the Yankees are successful because the owners are willing to risk unprofitability in order to sport a successful team on the field. The Yankees’ primary sources of income in the last few years have been their new television network (a risky investment) and their almost unparalleled attendance figures (spurred on by the winning team fans come to see). The Yankees have proven that investing in successful teams will eventually lead to great consumer interest.

Conservatives also point to the strength of the players’ union as a major cause of baseball’s woes. Baseball’s financial success as a sport coincided with the steroid era, and in the face of steroid revelations, that players’ union refused to support a drug testing policy unless it was so watered down that it would make a mockery of the concept.

But baseball is not merely a sport on which political disputes can be projected, nor is it simply a reflection of American capitalism of the last twenty years. Baseball’s greatest changes were reflections of America’s steps towards greatness decades ago. Walter O’Malley and Horace Stoneham were baseball manifestations of Lewis & Clark, discovering life west of Chicago and opening the game to new markets in new time zones. Tony La Russa’s vision of using left-handed pitchers only against left-handed batters and of saving his second or third best pitcher on the roster for the last inning to close the game made him baseball’s Henry Ford; this specialization has led to more secure job creation and provided rescue rafts for a handful of the sport’s most prestigious players. Of course, not all of America’s advances have received unanimous support, and that is true of baseball: the introduction of the designated hitter in the American League in 1973 remains controversial to this day.

Despite its seemingly low television ratings, baseball is still remarkably successful, particularly in average attendance. That should make sense: baseball’s position as the nation’s preeminent sport occurred before the mass appeal of television took hold, and people had to go to the games to get the full picture. Baseball is a live sport, and baseball’s recent success can partially be attributed to the construction of new fan-friendly ballparks. Since the opening of Oriole Park at Camden Yards in 1993, twenty franchises have opened new home stadiums, and four others have made significant renovations to their existing homes to placate consumers. Of the remaining six, one franchise has a new ballpark ready to open next year, and two others remain beloved by their fans for either its history (Chicago’s Wrigley Field) or the fact that the fan experience at the ballpark rivals that of even the newest constructions (Los Angeles’ Dodger Stadium).

Despite this, football has seemingly surpassed baseball in America’s national conscious. That’s only natural, because football represents what America idealizes about itself, while baseball represents America as it actually is.

Football is America looking at a magazine cover; baseball is looking in a mirror.