Fourteen: American Baseball (07-28-2022)
Going to a baseball game, once a revered past time for all Americans, has become a difficult venture in handling the logistics, security, and organization of a large stadium and expensive sporting event. Getting past high ticket prices is only the first step to enjoying timeless Americana, but is followed by a series of undeniably American busy-body processes and expensive concessions. The Post-9/11 security theater and hot dog stand price gouging are only the beginning of a difficult process that results in little reward.
In most US cities, the stadiums are kept far from the urban center. This is usually a beneficial arrangement, as it forces people onto public transit and keeps the traffic (both foot and vehicle) of large sporting events away from the city center. The problem, for most Americans, is that this results in a long and hot trek across a see of asphalt, an excruciating mile-long walk that tests the limit of the overweight and nonathletic. For baseball games, unless a patron enters the exclusive upper-echelon of fans who can afford club box tickets, no relief is provided from the sweltering heat of summer, with most US baseball venues being stadiums rather than domes. Hydration and satiation are also limited, with food being priced well above its actual value, with stadiums taking advantage of their captive audience.
The inequities and inadequacies of American sporting events, namely baseball games, are the single greatest injustice facing domestic society. America's great past time, watching nut scratchers hit balls really hard, is in jeopardy of losing the last of its audience as a result of high prices and poor accommodations, but the greatest threat to American baseball is not the struggle to attend in person, but the sudden realization of all in attendance of the wasted money upon first pitch, when the disappointing reality of how profoundly boring the game is sinks in.
Here is the proposed solution, the simple path to baseball returning to its kingship among American sporting events, and a revival of its associated industries: mine the field. No, this is not a suggestion to dig out America's baseball fields into open-air pit mines, although who knows what valuable minerals might be below the surface, but a suggestion to lay mines and other explosives in the infield and outfield of every major baseball stadium. Athletes are modern gladiators, and with the exception of American football, which does doom many of its players to violent fates of murder suicide or less glamorous Alzheimer's. few athletes are in any danger. An element of conflict, of violence and loss of limb, will revive American's interest in the sport.
Whether they will admit it or not, Americans love violence. Whether they gush over guns, war, and the boys in blue, or sit glued to their screen nervous over the latest goings on of the war in Ukraine and the latest totally real mass shooting, Americans cannot get enough of blood, guts, and dead people. They even continue watching American football knowing that with each tackle, the players get one step closer to a vegetative state. Playing into this bloodlust by putting every professional baseball player at risk of becoming a wounded warrior lookalike will reanimate audience's interest in what is otherwise a slow, strategy and excitement-free sport.
Further to this point, Americans already prefer sports that are more violent or have a higher risk of devolving into violence. Football is a Parkinson's research program, hockey allows fisticuffs, basketball is, well, popular in certain demographics, and 14 million people watched the Winter Olympics, which has a rifle event. Baseball, an otherwise slow and conflict free game, has lost a significant portion of its viewership over the years. Redesigning the playing field such that an uncareful outfielder or inattentive basemen could be detonated at any moment is the only fair way to regain the public's interest.
Baseball is already a sport without much strategy or skill. Stealing bases is the pinnacle of baseball strategy, and the supposed existence of different types of pitches is an unsurprising excuse that supporters of the sport delude themselves into believing in order to maintain an air of sophistication in a sport that can be played by drunkards and children. The lack of strategy or skill needed to play baseball is central to its personality as a game, and maintained by placing the risk of dismemberment at random.
Baseball will never return to its position atop the pyramid of sports, but adding some fireworks and bloodshed will certainly improve its otherwise grim future.