Why I Lost Interest in Baseball

While I am still a casual fan of Major League Baseball, I am not anything close to the baseball fanatic that I once used to be. When I was growing up, baseball was king, but not so much now. I recently did a little introspection to try to determine why this is the case. When I did, I was able to come up with ten reasons for my diminished interest in baseball, and I have listed them below. With the exception of the first one, they are not listed any particular order, chronological or otherwise.

1) The Phillies' late-1970's NLCS woes. This was probably the genesis of my waning interest in baseball. Up until that point, I was a diehard fan of baseball, and especially the Philadelphia Phillies. After having not been in the post-season since 1950, the Phillies won their division three straight years -- 1976, 1977, and 1978 -- only to lose in the NLCS all three times, first to the Cincinnati Reds and then twice to the Los Angeles Dodgers.

Their loses left me, as a teenager back then, heartbroken all three years. This was especially true in 1978, during my senior year of high school. When Dodger second-baseman Bill Russell's game-winning hit ended the NLCS that year, something else apparently ended too – my childhood love affair with the Phillies. Things just weren't the same after that.

Oh, they finally won the NLCS and subsequently the World Series in 1980, but it was too little, too late. Because of the fact that they had added Pete Rose, a player whom I loathed, to their roster in 1979, I had already disowned them.

2) Interleague play. I consider this completely anathema to the history and integrity of the game. There was something about keeping the two leagues apart during the regular season that made the All-Star Game and World Series enormously special. Now baseball has thrown this all away -- and for what? For 100 years, baseball did just fine without interleague play. Why, all of a sudden, did it become necessary, beginning in 1997? It was a curiosity at first, and I have to admit, it did attract some additional interest in baseball.

However, now that its novelty has worn off, it does nothing but create all kinds of quirks in teams' schedules. With the unbalanced schedule that is being used now, interleague play creates a situation in which some teams in the same league play only two series' against each other per season. In addition, some teams from different leagues play each other almost as many times as they play other teams in the their own league. This is something I find truly disgusting.

3) Uniform changes. I really miss those light blue road uniforms that teams like the Phillies and St. Louis Cardinals used to wear in the 1970's and 1980's. They've now been replaced by boring road grays. I also preferred those snug-fitting polyester uniforms of the 1970's. They looked a lot neater than today's loose, wrinkly garb -- which just looks tacky to me.

And what's up with all of those solid dark-colored tops? They look like something softball teams -- not big leaguers -- should wear. Shirts and pants of any MLB team's uniform should be the same color. And other than the logo and writing, it should be mandated to be a light color. And what happened to stirrups? Now that most players have abandoned them, baseball has indeed lost some of its on-field mystique. Minus the stirrups, the uniform pants look like ordinary long pants. How special is that?

4) Throw-back stadiums. Many fans love the new baseball-only, throw-back stadiums that have been built since the early 1990's. Not me – I'm definitely a contrarian on this issue. When I was growing up in the 1970's, most of the stadiums were of the so-called cookie-cutter variety that most fans love to hate. However, that kind of stadium is what I grew accustomed to and therefore I considered it to be the norm. That's what I became comfortable with.

Yes Virginia, I really liked those multipurpose stadiums, complete with Astroturf and all the other warts. I still harbor fond memories of Veteran's Stadium, Three Rivers Stadium, Riverfront Stadium and the like.

There's something I just don't like about those new stadiums, but I can't quite put my finger on it. Maybe it has something to do with those corporate names being stamped on them. Then again, perhaps it's merely aversion to change.

5) Too much expansion. The addition of more teams should have ended after the leagues went to 28 teams each with the 1993 NL expansion. Now the talent pool has been diluted way too much. This is especially true when it comes to pitching. Guys who are not quite ready for primetime and should still be in AAA can now be found on Major League rosters. As a result, the quality of the game has suffered.

And did we really need to put franchises in Florida and Arizona? Traditionally, those venues were reserved for spring training. Call me old-fashioned, but I still think those places are more suited for the Grapefruit and Cactus leagues than for Major League.

6) Spoiled, millionaire players. I remember the first players to make a million dollars a year when I was a kid. The whole free-agency thing began back then, but has grown far too out of hand now. When it was getting started back in 1970's, there were still many players who spent their entire careers with one team. That's a rarity now.

Today's players are more like mercenaries, primarily out to peddle their services to the highest bidder. The players union has gotten too strong and there seems to be very little team loyalty on the part of today's major leaguers. They do not seem to have the best interests of their teams at heart. Instead, their top priority appears to be padding their personal statistics with a view to negotiating their next bloated contract.

7) Failure to bring a team to Virginia. As a lifelong resident of Virginia, I have been turned off by all the teasing and tantalizing I've had to endure in regard to the possibility of a Major League franchise coming to the Commonwealth. If baseball's powers-that-be never intended to make Virginia a Major League locale, they shouldn't have ever floated the idea. On three different occasions they got Virginians' hopes up for a team, only to crush them later.

In 1995, Northern Virginia was one of three finalists for the two 1998 expansion franchises. However, St. Petersburg and Phoenix were the ultimate winners, leaving Northern Virginia on the outside looking in.

In 1996, businessman William Collins thought he had a deal with Houston Astros' owner Drayton McLane to buy the team and relocate it to Northern Virginia. However, Major League owners soon put the kibosh on that transaction. They wanted to give McLane enough time to get a new stadium in Houston. He eventually did, and subsequently decided to stay put.

When MLB owners were looking to relocate the Montreal Expos for the 2005 season, Northern Virginia and Norfolk were in the running to get them, but the team ultimately moved to Washington, DC. All of this left Virginia a three-time loser in the Major League sweepstakes – and left a bad taste in this Virginian's mouth.

8) Realignment and expanded playoffs. One unique advantage that baseball used to have over the other major sports is that teams had to actually win something, i.e., their division, to be eligible for post-season play. Not so anymore.

Baseball gave this up in 1994, when it went to a three-division alignment in each league. At that point, not only was each of the six division winners awarded a trip to the post-season, but the concept of wildcard teams was introduced. Now the best second-place finisher from each league also makes the playoffs, which have been expanded by one more round. In addition, this regularly pushes the completion of World Series out to around Halloween, and often into November.

9) Too many pitching changes. Nothing interferes with the continuity of a baseball game quite like a pitching change does. And there are a lot more of them now than there were in the days when I was a young baseball fan.

I know there were more complete games by starting pitchers back then. Starters generally stayed on the mound until they were no longer effective. Middle relievers even stayed in games longer than they do now. Nowadays, starters and middle relievers are generally gone after they reach a fixed number of pitches.

And so-called closers are usually limited to one or two innings at the most. In addition, we now have too many pitching specialists, many of whom are brought into games just to pitch to one batter. Good grief! Isn't baseball slow enough as it is? My short attention span just can't take it.

It seems to me that today's managers try to outsmart themselves by making too many moves. They're trying to be a little too cute by half. Why can't they just take a more hands-off approach and let the pitchers pitch and the hitters hit? The games would move a lot faster and fans would actually stay awake.

10) Too much exposure on TV. Contrary to the old cliché, you can get too much of a good thing. When I was growing up, baseball on TV was an event to look forward to. There were normally just two games on TV in any given week, one on Saturday afternoon and the other on Monday night. Occasionally, they would show two games on Saturday afternoon. But that was it. I was left with such a hunger for baseball that I listened to several games a week on the radio.

Now, we have just the opposite problem, which, in my opinion, is much worse. With the advent of cable and satellite TV, games are on nearly every day during the regular season. Where I live, there are usually at least two games to choose from daily. Our cable system carries almost every game played by both the Baltimore Orioles and the Washington Nationals, two teams that I care very little about. That's in addition to multiple games a week on ESPN and WGN, along with the weekend games broadcast by FOX and TBS.

Then, if that's not enough, there's even an add-on package available that will allow one to see nearly every MLB game that's played during a season. I'm not interested. Baseball on TV has become as ubiquitous as mosquitoes on a hot summer night -- and I reached the saturation level long ago.

After reading this diatribe, some people might conclude that I'm not a real baseball fan. Maybe that's a correct diagnosis. It might be that I'm just a curmudgeon who is steadfastly trying to hold on to past, infatuated with the way baseball existed in the days of my youth. Perhaps I need to do some additional soul searching.