Don’t count baseball out just yet

More viewers, ticket buyers than NFL can boast

In a happy little coincidence for a team that deserves one, the Pittsburgh Pirates had Sunday all to themselves. The Steelers, their NFL neighbours on the city’s North Shore, were off this weekend. A fall Sunday in Pittsburgh, with only baseball on the schedule? Imagine that.

Anyone lucky enough to be at PNc Park on Tuesday will not forget the experience. The stands rattled and hummed, the fans unleashing two decades of frustration on the cincinnati reds, unnerving an ace starter and expediting the firing of a rival manager.

“I’ve been to AFc playoff s , AFc championship games,” Neil Walker, the Pirates’ second baseman and a native son of Pittsburgh, said afterward, drenched in champagne. “There were only 40,000 in the stands, but I’m pretty sure this was the loudest. This was absolutely incredible.”

The comparison of baseball to the NFL, in cities like Pittsburgh and the country as a whole, is never far from the surface. The notion that football rules and baseball is passé has persisted for decades, never mind that the fundamental difference in the sports — the schedules — invalidates the premise.

One sport has 16 games and plays once a week. The other has 162 games and plays almost every day. both are fascinating and fun to watch, and loyalties are passed down through generations. The one with 10 times the scarcity, naturally, has higher ratings and draws bigger crowds to individual games. The one with more dates to sell, naturally, has more total viewers and ticket buyers. Those who bash baseball forget the second part.

baseball has problems, like every industry. It may not have a transcendent, crossover star in his prime — think Tom brady or Lebron James — but, again, consider the sport. The positional equivalent of the quarterback, the starting pitcher, changes every day. And even the best hitters come to bat only once per nine players through the order. basketball stars, in theory, can shoot every trip down the court.

The point is that baseball is a different game that defies traditional comparisons. In every way besides national postseason television ratings, the game is thriving, and the real effect of those low ratings is generally overstated. Last year, baseball reached an eight-year deal with Fox, eSPN and TbS for its national rights fees. The value of that contract was US$12.4-billion, a 100% increase over the previous deal.

With so much revenue floating around, every team has a path to success and a good chance to keep its star players. The A’s qualified for the postseason, like other small-market teams in Tampa bay, cleveland, cincinnati and Pittsburgh. yet while the playoff field has expanded in the last 20 years, to 10 teams from four, it remains more exclusive than those in the NFL and the NbA.

“even though the wild card has diminished the classic pennant race, the trade-off has been worth it, especially with the second wild card,” Nbc’s bob costas said. “Now, more teams have a chance late in the season, and there is a marked difference between being first — especially if you have the best record in the league — and being a wild card. The fact is, more teams are alive.

“realignment, the wild cards, revenue sharing and widespread use of Moneyball techniques haven’t levelled the playing field, but they’ve narrowed the gap considerably.”

Twenty-six of the 30 teams — all but Kansas city, Miami, Seattle and Toronto — have reached the playoffs in the last eight seasons. The smallest market in the majors, Milwaukee, has averaged more than 31,000 fans a game in each of the last seven seasons. Half the teams in the majors drew at least 2.5 million this season, and most now play in modern, charming downtown ballparks.

Franchise values are exploding. Last year, a group led by Mark Walter, Magic Johnson and Stan Kasten bought the Los Angeles dodgers for US$2.15-billion. Then they reached a local TV deal that could be worth US$8-billion over 25 years.

“We made a gamble when we bought the team and paid what we paid for it, and everyone said we paid too much,” Kasten, the team president, said before Game 1 of the dodgers’ division series here Thursday. “We paid that much because we thought it was worth more. And it turns out, gee, it really was, on the basis of the support we were going to get from our fans, from tickets, cokes and hot dogs, from strategic partners wanting to align with us, from sponsors and, yes, from media partners.”

baseball’s history adds texture to its storylines, especially in October. clint Hurdle, the Pirates’ manager, guided colorado to its first World Series in 2007 and coached for Texas in its first World Series in 2010. The rise of the Pirates is different, he said. It takes on more meaning because the team is restoring a legacy.

“The synergy downtown, the energy that gets brought into the ballpark,” Hurdle said, “for so many fans to have this opportunity to revisit some of that feel-good that they had before, that’s special.”

If critics still see baseball as a slow game clinging to a romanticized past, lacking sizzle and relevance for the modern age, they are missing quite a show.