Is baseball slouching towards boxing?

     Opening weekend has come and gone and the White Sox are 2-1. I'll take a series victory, although a sweep against Cleveland (with 8,000 strong watching the Cleveland victory at Jacobs...oh...Progressive Field; by the way, is it Progressive Field brought to you by.... or just Progressive Field? Watch out. Sponsorships of sponsorships are coming) would have been nice.

     This post is not about the White Sox though. It's about the popularity of baseball. As someone who has his pulse on the youth of America (or at least I like to think I do), I must say I feel that baseball will soon be relegated to the "sport that was once really popular" bin, alongside boxing and horse racing. This may take a decade or two, but I believe it's coming. I lament this fact, for I love the sport and all its strategy and inherent languidness. However, many kids do not feel this way. In my line of work I run into young kids all the time and inevitably sports pops-up as a topic of discussion. With the exception of those who play the sport, virtually every teen, female and male, sports-fan or not, express their dislike of the game and how slow it is. In this age of short attention spans and instant gratification, baseball seems to lose out. More than a few have claimed baseball is akin to watching paint dry. Depending upon the poll you look at, baseball has already fallen behind basketball as America's third favorite sport.

     Judging by my observations, it has virtually no chance of moving up, and may even fall behind UFC or some other sport. This is sad. Baseball is synonymous with America and I feel its decline will leave us with a void. Baseball is woven in the fabric of our nation. The lazy barbecues with a beer in hand and either the game on the radio or the TV, the discussions about legendary teams that either won or should have won (i.e. '93 Expos), the challenge of naming an entire starting lineup of your favorite team that made one of your childhood summers magical, etc. etc. Football is a great sport, but it does not have the tradition that baseball has. It doesn't have the same feel and it does not carry the same resonance.

Oh well, enough about the future. I will not let the potential demise of baseball ruin this year or future years. After all, I know how good the sport is. For those who don't see it, well, it's their loss. So here's to a White Sox season that is sure to be filled with excitement and a Cubs season sure to be filled with misery! It will be 103 years after this season Cubbies. Go Sox!