This is what I commented on the Facebook on Friday, October 28th about the charm of the baseball:

“I turned on to the game after Jon Stewart Daily Show at 11:30 PM! I decided to turnoff TV 5 times in those last 3 innings, but did not! What an exciting finish! The Yogi Bera phrase “It is not over till it is over” was so true last night!… It was fascinating to think and observe how the players and the managers of both theams lived that one hour of excitement and anxieties! Of course, the spectators in the stadium were fully involved too in that experience! WONDERFUL! Baseball does reflect life in many ways! Slow, but unpredictable and exciting for few moments. Seize those moments!”

Baseball, like other mature sports, goes through ebbs and flows (2010 8.9% increase on participation). Kids have more options today, with longer seasons and more sports and recreational offerings. They tend to play their sport of choice longer, while choosing a secondary sport for more recreational purposes. This two sport focus leads to a lack of participation in all major sports. A sport like football has low participation but a large fan base, due mainly to the fact that the sport is an event played once a week and is an opportunity to throw a party. NBA basketball is at an all time low with back to back years of falling attendance and Soccer participation has declined since 1997 according to a Highbeam Business article: “Participation in soccer grew 18.4 percent from 1987 to 1997, with some 18.2 million Americans playing the game at least once in 1997. Participation figures declined from there, reaching 13.6 million in 2009″.

Baseball Attendance:
MLB Baseball has been experiencing it’s largest ticket sales and overall revenue the past few years. Plain and simple baseball is financially the strongest it has ever been: See article: http://mlb.mlb.com/news/article.jsp?ymd=20101004&content_id=15410876&vkey=news_mlb&c_id=mlb.

Team Sports Results.

On the team sports side, there were large participation gains in the larger sports, but declines in others. Basketball and baseball led the team sports with 10.1% and 8.9% increases respectively in 2010.

Some of the results from Sports Participation in 2010 Series are below:

Basketball – 10.1% increase to 26.9 million participants.

Baseball – 8.9% increase to 12.5 million participants.

Ice Hockey – 7.9% increase to 3.3 million participants.

Football – 4.8% increase to 9.3 million participants.

Soccer – 0.3% decrease to 13.5 million participants.

Volleyball – 1.0% decrease to 10.6 million participants.

Participation Results
Baseball is possibly the only sport mentioned above that only pulls participant data from the demographics of Male and age range of 7yrs old to 18yrs. Other sports participation takes into consideration league and recreational participation and any age or either gender. Baseball numbers are based on actual league participation. A true measure of baseball popularity is to combined (like all other sport polls on participation) all ages, gender and all forms of the sport. Meaning combined mens baseball 18yrs and up, girls fastpitch ages 7yrs and older, men’s slowpitch and windmill softball all ages and you will find the combined in excess of approx 26 million participants…Making it, along with basketball, the largest team sport

Thank you.