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Reply to "Is baseball declining?"

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quote:
What in the world is wrong with this picture?


Observations...

1. Not sure that you can support an overall decline on the basis of the record of a single high school or single zip code. There are two sides to every story. Every loss is a win for soemone else. It is a zero sum game, one team's losses are another teams's gains. And there are tens of thousands of HS programs flourishing. BUT, that being said...

2. The shift from baseball as a team sport, played by individuals, to a game played with other to further an individuals "career" has implications for local programs.

3. High school and community programs nationwide are under increasing pressure from year round programs, the same way that other sports are. Like it or not, for better or for worse that is the reality

4. IMO, other sports have recognized, taken action and have gone a long way in the decade to close the gap between themselves and baseball. Baseball is slow on the uptick in this regard.

5. A case is often made by those here that that the quality of baseball is impoving as the quantity decreases. They will tell us that as the chaf is weeded out earlier and the "better" players gather to play regionally and nationally at younger ages the quality improves. They will tell us that this is a good development for baseball. That local and community and zip code baseball is just too weak to develop quality baseball. In this scenerio, many local programs may suffer, in many scenerio's local programs may fly if "national" players return to play locally.

6. While that may be true, success at any sport as a whole is a numbers game. More players mean a wider net of genetic material. The more we run off the masses, the less mathematical opportunity we have to catch the genetic anomolies who are the elite. Also part of the success of baseball has always been that due to it's grass roots programs it has always had "first pick", and it has until now been a cultural rite of passage.

Cool 44
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Last edited by observer44
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