Whoever wants to know the heart and mind of America had better learn baseball.
—Jacques Barzun
Is that still true? I don’t think so. I’ve said elsewhere that it’s football you have to understand to get Americans, even if Jeremy might feel otherwise. When George Carlin did his famous number on football vs baseball, he was not only pointing out the differences between a farmer’s pastime and an allegory for war, he was explaining the evolution of America over the last 100 years. We have become a more precise, more aggressive people. We have lost our sense of nuance.
But whether it’s football or baseball that defines us, we can still learn a bit about ourselves through inspection. Our heroes have fallen mightily, so many revealed as juicers that it is no longer a surprise to hear the latest confession. The atmosphere clearly encouraged the use of steroids through a “don’t ask, don’t tell” attitude, and we, the fans, have been largely willing to just give everyone a pass.
The price of a night at the ballgame is now beyond the reach of your average working-class family, and the stadiums themselves – built at great taxpayer expense – have been neatly divided into class-oriented strata. Customers are more apt to buy a season package from their TV provider than season tickets, and this is partly because today’s fan is likely more driven by his fantasy league than by his hometown team. The new dream is to be not Derek Jeter, but George Steinbrenner. As Robert Lipsyte says, the ballplayers themselves have become mere monopoly pieces. “Teddy Roosevelt’s hero, ‘the man who is actually in the arena,’ has been replaced with the Gekko bonus baby who owns the arena.”
Fantasy leagues define our country today. Isn’t the lesson of America that it is better to own than to work?
Wow, there’s actually a lot to respond to in that post, some things I disagree with, other things I do agree with, or make me think. Firstly, I think if you were able to take away the possibility of betting on football it’s popularity would crash drastically. I think it’s interesting what you say about Jeter vs. Steinbrenner, but I think that perhaps our culture is now changing back to that healthier paridigm of admiring the acheiver and not necessarily the rich owner; post-crash, hopefully the idolizing of CEOs is a thing of the past. I like what you said about the fantasy baseball thing, I have no interest in that and I think you lose the charm of the game making it into a board game of sorts.
Given that fantasy sports represent about a $3-$4 billion industry, and Bloomberg is now jumping in head first, I’d say your point about betting on football could easily be applied to baseball. Although I can’t find any breakdown of that $3-$4 billion among the sports, and I’d certainly agree that normal sportsbook operations (both legal and illegal) make way more on football than baseball. But check that link on what Bloomberg is doing. And notice that the most recent law banning online gambling specifically leaves out Fantasy Sports.