Marvin Miller would be pissed

As much as it pains me to write this post, duty calls. What was once America's national pastime has indeed slipped to, at best, the third most popular sport in the country. Baseball is no longer the favorite of the masses, we know, but it finally hit me that it's no longer even number 2. Why do I feel this to be true?

Today in the 'burgh, the temperature reached nearly 70 degrees which brought everyone out of their houses (seriously, most of you should turn around and go right back in) to do things they couldn't do in months (such as shower...). Some guys from work and I had been planning on playing basketball today for almost a week, then when we saw the weather forecast, we knew we'd have a tough time getting on a court. For more than an hour we drove to all the courts we knew, only to come up completely unsuccessful in our quest.

We probably checked out 15+ courts and not a single one was open. Now, given the level of competition, we could have easily played our way on, but we didn't want to play like that all day. So, we saw all these courts full up of people, gave up and headed home. It was on the way back to my apartment that I realized I had seen hundreds of people playing basketball today, but how many did I see on the baseball diamonds at some of the parks? None.

This is a trend which has been dissected more and more over the past decade or two; why is baseball's popularity decreasing amongst the youth in this country? To stay sort of on point, I'm not going too far into this debate, but my favorite argument is that the space required for baseball is so large that today's urban populations simply don't have places to play, whereas a single basketball court is no larger than 94' by 50' and usually much less - plus one can play/practice basketball alone. Baseball's blight is a product of city living (and MANY other causes).

No, I'm not making such a sweeping generalization on the game's popularity based on one day in a crappy city, but basketball is most likely the favorite or second favorite sport of the majority of urban residents. This country has been making a transition to up pace music, sports, hell everything for a while now and baseball's length and short bursts of action have traditionally been turnoffs.

What follows is a rudimentary guess at the most popular sports in the country today:
1. Football
2. Basketball
3. Baseball
4. Soccer - I am not okay with this
5. Jogging - I think it's a soft "J", apparently you just run for an extended period of time - kind of like soccer, except you can substitute dogs and small children for the ball
6. Bicycling in any form
7. Weightlifting - if you want to call it a sport
8. Anything including a frisbee
9. Hockey - I'll let any other basement dwellers tackle this one if they want
10. Tennis
12. Golf

*Disqualified - NASCAR: not a sport

(Don't hate me for including jogging and weightlifting, but when working out is more exciting than one of your events, well, that's not good.

I for one don't expect the order of this list to remain constant over the next few years; football may well hold onto its number one spot, but basketball is making a push. The real challenge may possibly come from soccer. Hockey should eventually return to its former glory, if not better. Major League Baseball's future seems bleak compared to other professional sports (for some there's kind of a "been there, done that" quality, like pro wrestling), with its leaders doing nothing but hastening its decline. Golf somehow squeeked onto the list, nearly suffering the same fate as NASCAR/auto racing.

And to call back to erm's post about Marvin Miller, he's dead on that the HOF has neglected entrance to a man who entirely deserves to be in, probably more so than anyone on the outside (lone exception: Albert Belle).