Old White People Still Love Baseball

I laugh every time

 

What will ultimately happen if the market continues to dry up here is things will flip and the NHL will be more Canadian, with only teams north of the 40 degree parallel remaining in the US. Which is whatever. My team is older than the NHL anyway.

 

All those guys are trying not to straight up laugh at him. Probably the best work Dennis Condrey has ever done in maintaining his composure.

 

I like the NHL. They've just done a fabulous job of marginalizing their sport with constant labor strife.

 

Exactly. That's the biggest issue with the MLS. The tradition is a big factor, but if the MLS was the best league in the world, it would be significantly more popular. It's unfair to gauge the popularity of soccer by looking at the popularity of the MLS.

 

Hard to imagine them ever getting on par with the European leagues, but they've closed the gap more than I thought they would these last 10 years.

 

And over expansion. imho. But I have watched 2 minutes of NHL hockey ever.

 

Put Messi and Ronaldo in the MLS and they would be as big as LeBron.

 

True. They are in a bunch of markets that make no sense.

 

Find me some data showing the popularity of baseball among young people of hispanic descent.

 

If you don't believe that parents are pushing their kids away from football and that there are very good reasons for this, you haven't been paying attention.

The difference between between football and baseball here is twofold:
1. they're still watching football on tv. They still like it.
2. whereas, with football, parents push them into other sports because of safety concerns, with baseball, parents are dying for their kids to play, but the kids rightly think the game blows.

 

Exactly. MLS is a retirement league. Great players come here for their twilight years. Fill up the league with the best players in the world in their primes, and it would be extremely popular. Comparing the talent of MLS to leagues like the EPL and La Liga is like comparing the talent of the NBA to College Hoops.

 

I'd go with comparing the talent of the NBA to a European basketball league.

 

I don't watch European basketball leagues, so I don't feel like I should speak about their talent.

 

but that star power is steeped in playing soccer, which Americans have proven to care nothing about.

 

then why would it not have migrated here, where the pay climbed drastically in sports long before the rate hikes moved to Europe.

 

but college hoops has no problem generating fan support, even though it isn't littered with the best players in the world.

 

I don't even think that's big enough a gap.

 

Yes, because you can root for local teams.

 

How are we going to do it? We have to completely change our youth system. There's no other way to attract top talent in their prime.