As the new season of baseball begins for the Keene State College baseball team and spring training is in full swing for the MLB, the American sports world is ready to dive back into its deep love for the sport.
Baseball is a sport that has been cherished for over a century in the United States, taking on titles such as “America’s Game” or “America’s Pastime.” Its effects on the sports world as well as cultures throughout the nation have cemented its legacy in the minds of Americans. Despite the sport’s success over numerous decades, the question arises in the current age of baseball: Is it still the most beloved sport in the United States?
The historical profundity of the sport is a major factor in why baseball was at one point the most popular sport in the nation. Jackie Robinson was the first to break the color barrier in professional baseball and inspired others to pursue the sport because of his defiance. History Department Chair Graham Warder said another way that baseball affected culture in the U.S. is that baseball was important in bridging the divide between the working class and the middle class.
“In the late nineteenth century, this country was separated by class, and especially about definitions of masculinity,” Warder said. “Masculinity for the working class was around drinking, strength, energy, whereas the middle class was about being sober and working hard … Working-class men didn’t have to show they had energy, while middle-class men had lots of self-control but had sedentary jobs.”
Warder went on to explain how baseball was the sport that could bridge this gap and said, “[Baseball] is not pure energy right? You can swing as hard as anything, but you have to have control, the same thing with pitching. So baseball bridged those two definitions of masculinity unlike anything else.”
Students at Keene State weighed in on the question, being asked whether or not they believed that baseball is still the country’s most beloved sport in a yes or no survey. Out of 25 students asked, 15 of them said no and 10 students said yes. Although the question was yes or no, a significant amount of the replies on the “no” side were also accompanied by their suggestion of football being the most beloved sport.
One of those replies came from first-year Carter Poinier, saying that even a decade ago baseball was still the prized sport in America.
“At one point it definitely was, maybe even a few years ago. Right now I would definitely have to say football. The game [football] has changed and it has influenced the world even more than it might have just a few years ago,” Poinier said.
The love that people still have for baseball is the number of children who grow up playing the sport. Project Play, an organization designed to create healthy sporting environments, reports that in 2023 there were 3,326,801 children in the U.S. playing baseball, second to basketball. Mass integration to the sport at a young age for most Americans plays a big part in baseball being beloved by many.
Two students interviewed while answering the survey, sophomores Aiden McLellan and Garrett Kydd, both said that baseball is still the pinnacle of American sports and echoed that sentiment of growing up and playing baseball.
“I grew up playing baseball and I always watched it as a kid with the Red Sox and other teams, so I don’t see why it wouldn’t be,” Kydd said.
Baseball has made its changes in efforts to speed up the game, and according to ESPN the introduction of the pitch-clock in the 2023 season saw a decrease in the length of games by 24 minutes. That season saw an average length of two hours and forty minutes due to that pitch-clock change. The change implemented a clock that would run down for every pitch, and the pitcher would have to throw before it ran out or it would result in a free base. This change, along with the new implementation of the Automated Ball-Strike debuting in 2025 spring training, are efforts to change the game and have baseball reach the pinnacle of sports in America.
“One of the problems with baseball, it just doesn’t work on TV. I always thought baseball was best on the radio,” Warder said.
Jacob Enscoe can be contacted at
jenscoe@kscequinox.com
