When I was little, I could not stand watching baseball games. They were boring, took forever and seemed like adults playing glorified catch for tens of millions of dollars. Recently, though, I’ve gotten into it. My grandpa and I went to a New York Yankees game over the summer, and I enjoyed it! The game, which the Yankees won, thank you very much, got me thinking about baseball and its merits. I remember some of my high school teachers, especially male teachers in their 50s and 60s, talking about baseball and how it was the “quintessential American pastime.” I think they’re wrong (sorry, guys). While baseball is a popular sport and is generally pleasant to watch, it is no longer America’s favorite pastime, or even America’s favorite sport.
Before that, though, let’s talk about where baseball came from. While the exact origin is unknown, baseball most likely developed from various ball-and-stick games, like cricket, in the early 19th century. The first known use of the term “base-ball” appeared in John Newbery’s children’s book “A Little Pretty Pocket-Book” in 1744. This book was wildly popular in both England and North America. In 1845, a man named Alexander Cartwright came up with a set of rules for his baseball team, the New York Knickerbocker Base Ball Club. The first official baseball game, which followed these rules, was played in 1846 between the Knickerbockers and the New York Nines. These baseball rules spread during the Civil War and after the war, Cartwright’s baseball became the predominant form of baseball in the United States. The rules Cartwright invented remain widely unchanged today.
At first, baseball was truly a club sport: club members paid dues, and the point of the club was to help men socialize. In 1862, though, William Cammeyer built a gated baseball field and charged admission, a practice that quickly spread and led to more interclub games, rather than intraclub games. In 1869, the first all-professional baseball team was formed: the Cincinnati Red Stockings. Other cities followed suit, and various professional baseball leagues emerged and disbanded until the National League and American League merged to form the MLB (Major League Baseball).
Since the ‘60s, however, baseball viewership has been in decline. The beginning of the end began with television. In 1962, the NFL signed its first league-wide television contract, which put every NFL game on television. If you’re familiar with football, you’ll know that football benefits immensely from being on television instead of the radio. The same is true with basketball, in which the full NBA finals were aired for the first time in 1970. Baseball, on the other hand, is just as interesting on television as it is on the radio: It did not benefit much from switching from one medium to another. Why watch the same old sport when you could watch something new?
To make matters worse, baseball got boring. In 1960, there were 1.7 times as many hits as strikeouts. In 2021, however, there were far more strikeouts than hits (almost 3000 more). Finally, until recently, baseball games had been getting longer and longer. In 2021, the average baseball game took three hours and 11 minutes to complete. Compare that to a soccer match, which is always 90 minutes long with a 15-minute intermission–plus about five minutes of stoppage time — and has far more action than a baseball game. These factors all worked together to diminish the popularity of baseball and make way for the new giant of American sports: football. In 2023, 41% of Americans claimed that football was their favorite sport, with baseball and basketball almost tied for second place at 10% and 9%, respectively.
That said, in 2023, the MLB introduced a new rule that revolutionized baseball: the pitch clock, which created a quicker game. In 2025, the average length of a baseball game was two hours and 40 minutes, significantly lower than the average length in previous years, which was often in excess of 3 hours. The pitch clock brought me back to baseball. It brought many others to baseball, too. This season, MLB viewership increased dramatically. Major League Baseball post-season viewership has increased by 13% over the past year and averaged 4.48 million viewers per game. This post-season marks the highest viewership of the previous 15 years. In fact, viewership for the Division Series round increased by 30% compared to 2024. Similarly, since the introduction of the pitch clock in 2023, MLB game attendance has had three consecutive years of growth for the first time since 2007.
While baseball has clearly lost its spot at the top of the American sports food chain, it continues to be an incredibly popular sport throughout America. It is a fantastic sport — especially now with the pitch clock — and continues to gain popularity on television and in-person. In my opinion, a sport doesn’t have to be everyone’s favorite; it just has to be good!
Emma Kelner, FCLC ’29, is an undeclared major from Staten Island, New York.
