Quote:
Originally Posted by htismaqe
I think a lot of people are baseball fans because they played it as a kid.
In small town rural America, especially before the late 1990's, the only option for kids to play organized sports was little league. Basketball and football weren't nearly as accessible and in most cases, didn't even exist for kids younger than junior high.
Baseball was the defacto kids game everywhere I ever lived.
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Nailed it. Football will always be my favorite, but baseball was different for the reason you are saying. I was wearing a uniform at the age of 5. That didn't happen in football or basketball until I was in the 7th grade.
I figured the emergence of traveling baseball over the years would have led to a bigger audience, but it really hasn't. It may have hurt it. It may have caused too big of a gap between the better players and the average players turning the average players away too soon.