Is Baseball Back?

From now on, all of my stories will feature story highlights, outlining the arguments and points I will be making in the story. Enjoy the new feature:

• NFL Lockout may increase popularity of MLB
• More fantasy baseball players may help baseball's popularity
• Younger players in small markets are key to growth of baseball
  

For the past decade, while football has rapidly gained popularity, baseball has sunk into obscurity. America's pastime has become a thing of the past, too slow-paced and long-winded for a modern audience that lives in a fast-paced world and has a seemingly short attention span.

But an impending NFL lockout might just be the thing that delivers Major League Baseball from dark times. This past year, for the first time ever, an NFL game garnered more viewers than a World Series game; The Sunday Night Football match-up between the Steelers and Saints drew 18.1 million viewers compared to the 15.5 million people that tuned in to Game 4 of the World Series. Even though the next night, the World Series had a 10.6 rating, compared to Monday Night Football's 8.6 rating, a game which featured the Colts and the Texans, the World Series game that night was the clinching game for the Giants, making it reasonably more popular.

If there is no football to watch in early September, sports fans will have to rationally turn to the next best thing, the MLB playoffs. If the MLB is lucky enough to have big market teams make it deep into those playoffs, you can bet that more and more people will be reaching into the depths of their closets, brushing the cobwebs off of their baseball jerseys and tuning into baseball games.

Another reason that the MLB may benefit from an NFL lockout is because of fantasy sports. Fantasy football nerds - the smart ones at least - may be turning to fantasy baseball this year, in fear that a lockout may shorten or even completely cancel their fantasy football season. You gotta get your fantasy fill somehow right? Currently an estimated 18 million Americans play fantasy football, as compared to 7 million Americans playing fantasy baseball. That means at least an additional 11 million Americans could be turning to fantasy baseball to get their fill. With fantasy baseball being more of a commitment with games being played every day, it is possible that millions of people that usually would only be football fans will start following baseball extremely closely.

Another big reason that baseball is on the rise is that currently, Major League Baseball is undergoing a transition of popularity from its old stars like Jeter and A-Rod over to younger guys like Hanley Ramirez, Joey Votto, Ryan Braun, Evan Longoria, Carlos Gonzalez, Robinson Cano and Tim Lincecum. These youngsters are presumably steroid-free, and best of all many of them play in small markets, big stars in little cities. Without the NFL, many sports fans in small markets will only have their baseball teams to look forward to; the only towns that have NFL teams but no MLB teams are Buffalo, Indianapolis, Jacksonville, Nashville, Charlotte and New Orleans and some of those cities will have teams in-state or close-by to adopt in September.

Small market teams like the Twins, Reds and Rockies are looking poised to make the playoffs this year, and may just create the most excitement out of any team with the core of young stars that each team has. And if there is one thing the MLB needs right now its excitement, and a group of young stars to reach its toughest demographic: kids. Just look at the NBA; when young guys like LeBron, Wade, Carmelo, Dwight Howard, etc. took over the league from guys like Shaquille O'Neal, Allen Iverson and Karl Malone, the league was revitalized, and the NBA got as much attention as it did during the Jordan days.

As the shadow that steroids have casted over the sport for the past decade dissipates, the NFL struggles to get a new collective bargaining agreement done, and rising young stars continue to join MLB's ranks in small markets, Major League Baseball is looking poised to make a comeback. Baseball may not return to prominence as America's favorite sport, but it will certainly regain some of the viewership that it lost the past few decades while the NFL took over the sports world.