Is Baseball Still the National Pastime?

From the Letters to the Editor, at the New York Times:

To the Editor:

Jonathan Mahler, in “Is the Game Over?” (Sunday Review, Sept. 29), seems to confuse the status of Major League Baseball with the standing of the game of baseball in American society.

While he correctly observes that professional baseball is enjoying good times even as television ratings fall far behind professional and collegiate football and basketball, he doesn’t mention more important barometers of baseball’s continuing vitality and popularity among the American people.

These include the millions of boys and girls who join thousands of youth, scholastic, collegiate and American Legion baseball teams, along with the men and women who play baseball and softball in industrial and semiprofessional urban and rural leagues, and the continuing interest in the history and cultural meaning of baseball, as measured by the sale of baseball books, the popularity of baseball films like “The Natural” and “Field of Dreams,” and the public’s continuing fascination with the origins of the sport.

Major League Baseball may indeed rank a poor third to football and basketball in television ratings, but the game remains the national pastime because it resonates more deeply in the country’s soul than any other sport.

GEORGE B. KIRSCH
Hackensack, N.J., Sept. 29, 2013

The writer is the author of “Baseball and Cricket: The Creation of American Team Sports: 1838-72” and “Baseball in Blue and Gray: The National Pastime During the Civil War.”

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