ShareThisWhat with the World Series going on, this seems like a good time to ask the simple sports question: What is America's "National Pastime?"
If you answered "baseball," you're hopelessly out of touch. Or Bud Selig. Which, come to think of it, are synonymous.
Baseball likes to think of itself -- indeed, likes to bill itself -- as the "National Pastime." But that time is long gone, a distant memory, part of America's past, like those halcyon days when the best cars, televisions, and radios were made in the good, old. U.S. of A. and the nation's sports fans thought nothing could be better than going out to a baseball game, out to the park, buying some peanuts and Cracker Jack, and root, root, rooting for the home team.
They enjoyed the experience so much they didn't care if they ever came back.
Well, those days are gone, and they ain't ever coming back.
Not that fans don't still flock to major-league parks. At least in those cities where the teams have money to spend to put a major-league product on the field.
But, give your average sports fan a choice between watching baseball and watching football and, well, it's as predictable as asking your average, 18-to-35-year-old, prime-demographic, prime-time sports-watching male whether he'd prefer a night out with Ugly Betty, or with Jessica Simpson.
Here's the good news for Major League Baseball: The television ratings for this World Series between the Yankees, who make their home in the largest media market in America, and the also-major-market Phillies, have been significantly higher than for last year's matchup between the Phils and the Tampa Bay Rays.
The bad news is that even World Series games don't top regular-season NFL games.
Games 1 and 2, played in Yankee Stadium, averaged 19.2 million viewers. Neither one ranks among the top-10, most-watched sporting events since Super Bowl XLIII.
Game 4 on Sunday night was watched by 22.8 million viewers -- a 47 percent increase from last year's Game 4, which attracted 15.5 million.
But that still wasn't good enough to crack the top 5. Nor did it beat the 30.57 million who watched the end of Brett Favre's return to Green Bay, the Vikings' win Sunday afternoon over the Packers spilling past the 7 p.m. in the east on Fox, which then segued into its World Series pre-game show, followed by Game 4, shortly after 8.
The Falcons-Cowboys game Oct. 25 drew a TV audience of 28.4 million. The Giants and Redskins attracted 25.1 million viewers on Sept. 13. The following week, the Giants and Cowboys were watched by 24.8 million. A stunning total of 23.9 million watched the Patriots humiliate the Titans, 59-0, two weeks ago. The Steelers and Bears also were seen by 23.9 million Sept. 20.
But here the real stunner -- the one you just can't believe.
On Aug. 9, the Bills and Titans played in the Hall of Fame Game in Canton, Ohio. The Bills and Titans, mind you. Playing the first of five preseason games. By the second quarter, there would be guys playing most fans had never heard of, nor likely ever would see again.
That same Sunday, the Red Sox and Yankees -- the best rivalry in baseball, if not in all of sports -- were playing a nationally televised game on ESPN with important ramifications on the A.L. East race.
The Red Sox and Yanks were watched by 4.7 million. As for the Bills and Titans -- how about 7.9 million?
Clearly, there were a lot of people desperate to watch football that summer day.
The stat-geek, SABR-rattling, Bill Jamesians of baseball who are obsessed by numbers can't argue with the Nielson ratings.
Clearly, football is king with America's sports-watching public.
Baseball's defenders may point out that, because football is a once-a-week occurrence, more anticipation is generated, more excitement created, for those games. Which certainly is true.
But that doesn't explain why an exhibition game would attract more viewers than a prime time telecast between two of MLB's top draws.
Nor does it explain why it is that a regular-season NFL game would get higher TV ratings than a World Series game -- especially one that, like Sunday night's, that had no other game going up against it.
There's no reason that the 30 million sports fans watching Favre beat his old team at Lambeau Field wouldn't stay tuned to watch baseball, there to be joined by even more fans of hardball, creating an increased audience.
Actually, there is a reason -- more fans like football than baseball.
More fans would prefer to watch a regular-season NFL game than even a postseason, MLB game.
Football, not baseball, is the true National Pastime.
The next time somebody builds a "Field of Dreams," it'll have goalposts.
(Contact Jim Donaldson at jdonalds(at)projo.com.)
(Distributed by Scripps Howard News Service, www.scrippsnews.com.)
columnMust credit The Providence Journal
