Miami Marlins dilemma: Are we losing Baseball as America’s Pastime?

This may sound like a rhetorical question but is baseball still America’s pastime? Based on alarming trends at the youth level, baseball has been losing ground to multiple other sports. Given this fact, baseball is no longer the institution that connects generations together and sits nostalgic in the hearts of American sports fans.

Baseball continues to lose ground as the top youth sport in America.

Growing up in southern California in the 1970’s, there were plenty of sports options for me to choose from as a kid. I naturally gravitated towards baseball first but also played this new sport we now call soccer at the same time.  Both sports were fun for different reasons and I was pretty good (not great, just pretty good) at both sports. Tackle football came a few years later since we weren’t under the craze of allowing little kids to hammer away at each other quite yet.

Well, times have changed and in recent years the changes should set off every alam bell for baseball enthusiasts. In 2019, or what we like to call “pre-pandemic time,” youth sports in general was losing kids due to burnout and sports just not being fun anymore.  I played sports as a kid with no illusions of being a professional athlete someday. Yes, we dreamed of being a sports hero and I slept with a baseball in the summer and a football in the fall but that’s mostly because I loved sports. We played because sports were fun and our parents let us play because many of them played at least one sport and had fun too.

Baseball has created a huge chasm as a youth sport in today’s American society. While softball and lacrosse are growing, baseball is declining -rapidly -and that should be very alarming to Major League Baseball. From ages 6-12, baseball is still the biggest sport around but starting at ages 13-17, we are losing a whole generation of ball players. While baseball still is bigger than football at this age group (2.18 million to 1.46 million,) both are losing out to basketball which is now the largest sport for ages 13-17.

A 2020 Utah State University study showed the trends when parents are involved in determining what their child’s primary sport would be (I never had a primary sport, we just played different sports at different times of the year all the way through high school.)  Parents of chldren ages 6-18 showed that 22% of parents preferred their children play basketball, 15% play baseball, 14% favored soccer while only 8% favored football as a primary sport.  Fear of sports injuries due to concussions may be leading parents’ decisions about what sport their children play. However, baseball is much lower annually in the percentage of concussions versus other sports such as football, ice hockey and soccer.

Baseball loses most of its youth players once these kids turn age 13.

The largest disconnect for youth baseball occurs between the ages of 12 and 13. At this point, baseball no longer falls under the recreational guidance of Little League Baseball and players and their families are moving towards an alarming trend – travel baseball.  At this critical age juncture, youth baseball loses 2 million kids who don’t move on to continue playing the sport. Maybe it’s the larger fields once a player hits age 13; maybe it’s the fact that competitive, travel baseball creates an economic divide that many American families just can’t afford anymore.

In terms of income levels, 28% of athletes ages 13-17 who come from low-income families continue playing sports. On the other economic spectrum, 47% of young athletes who come from families with annual incomes over $100,000 continue on with sports including baseball. As players become older, the competitive travel team craze has made baseball more expensive and seemingly more exclusive. Remember, youth sports is a $15.3 billion dollar year business.

Combined with making baseball seemingly more expensive and exclusive to play is the fact that baseball just isn’t as popular to watch anymore either on television or at the ballpark.  From 2019 to 2021, television viewership was down over 12% and MLB attendance rates have been declining as well.  Of course, the Covid-19 pandemic did heavy damage to baseball game attendance and teams are just now showing signs of some recovery.  Nevertheless, baseball as a spectator sport is losing the battle with football and basketball as the true national pastime.  In my next article, I’ll explore ways that baseball can save itself from itself.