As seasons change, baseball remains ‘constant’

By David Mullen

Soon the seasons will change. As summer turns to fall, a sports fan’s interest — especially in Dallas — invariably turns to college football, the NFL, basketball and the NHL. Baseball will begin moving toward the back pages of the sports section. Now is not the time to relegate the National Pastime to a few wire stories wrapped around the classified ads. 

The NCAA is still grappling with the NIL issue, and many fans are in a quandary. College football, now more than ever, is becoming a minor league breeding ground for professional football players. Some stars may make more money playing college football than they will in the pros.

The NFL, clearly America’s most popular sport, still faces character issues with players, wild spending by billionaire owners and gambling — in person and online, legal and illegally — intrenched in the game. The NFL often takes fans for granted in the interest of greed. That will never become clearer than in 2025, when many key football games, once a staple of linear TV, will move to streaming services like Netflix, Amazon Prime and Peacock to provide more revenue to stuff into NFL owner’s pockets.

While lazy three-pointers are being launched on the court, NBA players bicker over multi-million-dollar contracts. Players like Kevin Durant, James Harden and Bradley Beal leverage their talents and threaten teams with uninspired play in order to get traded to a team of their choice. Durant will earn an annual salary of $53.28 million; Harden will be paid $40.75 million, and Beal will make a striking $53.67 million in the upcoming season. 

Between those three players, only Durant has won an NBA championship (2) over a combined 46 seasons. Their presence on the court does not guarantee success and is more likely to cause team instability.

Hockey is a great game to watch in person, but the action and excitement simply doesn’t translate to TV. Mix in a 2025 Stanley Cup Final with small market Florida (Miami) facing small market Edmonton with a league oversaturated by 32 teams, and NHL growth is stagnant.   

In the 1989 film, “Field of Dreams,” a fictional Terence Mann, stirringly portrayed by the late James Earl Jones, told baseball obsessed Ray Kinsella (Kevin Cosner), “The one constant through all the years, Ray, has been baseball.”

Baseball is the greatest spectator sport but not without issues. It is easy to point out that MLB has no salary cap, players earn bloated paychecks, a pitcher with a six-inning stint who has allowed three runs gets a “quality start” and the joy of viewing a baseball game in person — like NHL hockey — doesn’t translate to television.

It would be wrong to judge viewing baseball on TV by the low bar the Texas Rangers have set for their dreary and uninspired TV broadcasts found on the fledgling streaming service Victory+. Watch and listen to Jon “Boog” Sciambi and Jim Deshaies call a Cubs game from Wrigley Field, Dan Shulman and Buck Martinez orchestrate a Blue Jays contest from Toronto or Gary Cohen, Ron Darling and Keith Hernandez call a Mets game from anywhere and you’ll have a box seat behind the plate. After a Cubs win, the fans at Wrigley Field sing “Go Cubs Go” in unison after warming up their pipes to “Take Me Out to the Ballgame” in the seventh inning. Orioles’ fans in the right field “Bird Bath” are sprayed by Mr. Splash when Baltimore scores or registers an extra base hit. A game at Yankee Stadium doesn’t “officially” begin until the roll call from the Bleacher Creatures in the right field stands is acknowledged.    

Baseball is the most individual team sport. Fans root for a team but turn out to see individual stars like Aaron Judge, Shohei Ohtani, Mike Trout or Bryce Harper while yelling for unheralded San Francisco catcher Patrick Bailey to reach home plate for an improbable inside-the park, three-run walk-off home run for a Giants win. 

Individual defensive plays like the A’s Denzel Clarke’s disappearing act over the wall to nab a would-be homer in Anaheim, Ronald Acuna’s 301-foot throw from right field to third base for a putout and Yankee leftfielder Cody Bellinger corralling a low line drive before the ball hit the turf and wielding a perfect strike to first base for a double play are why features like ESPN’s “SportsCenter’s Top 10 Plays” exist.

Baseball honors legends like Babe Ruth, Joe DiMaggio, Willie Mays, Sandy Koufax, Henry Aaron and many others with tales of their greatness. Baseball milestones live on forever, not measured by exit velocity, launch angles, hard hit rates or other meaningless figures designed by Statcast. Anyone will tell you that Cal Ripken, Jr. bested Lou Gehrig for consecutive games played and that the Splendid Splinter Ted Williams was the last player to hit .400.

Like “Field of Dreams,” “Bull Durham,” “A League of their Own,” “Moneyball,” “The Natural,” “42” and so many other films capture the magic of the game. “America has rolled by like an army of steamrollers,” as Jones’ Mann character continued. “It’s been erased like a blackboard, rebuilt and erased again. But baseball has marked the time.” 

As the baseball season winds down to the pennant races, even the Rangers appear to have a chance at glory once again. The seasons will change, and priorities will move to football, basketball and hockey. Thankfully, there is still plenty of baseball yet to be played.