Jason Stark is a great sportswriter, or "Why you should love baseball again".

Baseball must turn to promoting the game


By Jayson Stark
ESPN.com


It may not be true that Bud Selig reads every word written about his sport by anyone with a printing press in the 48 contiguous states.

It's possible Bud once missed a letter to the editor about him by Uncle Leo Poundstone in the Big Fork Eagle in Montana in 1997.


But whatever, we know our commissioner cares very deeply about what people write, say and think about him and the game he loves. So we hope he's been taking notes on what has been written, said and thought about him and his sport in the week since baseball (we interrupt this program) did not go on strike.



The games may have continued. The catastrophe may have been averted. Labor history may have been made. But in the last week, we've seen all these adjectives hung on a sport that deserves better -- by writers and fans who have been turned off by eight years of labor strife, player-bashing, financial despair and general bad vibes:




"Boring ... irrelevant ... smug ... greedy ... slow."



And that's not all. We've heard and reads that kids don't care anymore, that players can't play, that the game's just a big steroid-injected homerfest, that a big-league game is now unaffordable and that much of America has realized it can live without the best sport ever invented.


But outside of that, everybody's happy.


OK, those are clearly not unanimous opinions. But if anybody is thinking them, writing them, uttering them or reading them, the biggest job baseball has, now that it's achieved labor peace, is to let those baseball-haters out there know that they're missing out on something fun, exhilarating and special.


Here are some of the messages we'd send if we were running baseball's marketing campaign:

1. The game is great
Boring? Irrelevant? What are these people watching (or not watching?) There is no other sport that produces the infinite possibilities, never-ending plot lines and cerebral joys that baseball does. None. Think about the last week or so:

Kerry Wood struck out four hitters and hit a home run in the same inning. A starting pitcher (Aaron Myette) threw two pitches all night and still got charged with a walk. A guy with more than 2,400 hits (Mark Grace) made his pitching debut. A shortstop (A-Rod) hit his 50th homer. The Phillies whiffed into a triple play. And the team that began the season with the 29th-highest payroll in baseball (the A's) won its 20th game in a row -- after blowing an 11-0 lead.


Maybe it's just us, but all of that's way more interesting than a 24-second violation.

The players are great
We keep hearing how players today can't play like they did in the olden days. Give it a rest.


You can go to a game these days and see the player who has scored the most runs in history (Rickey Henderson), a 6-10 left-hander with the fourth-most strikeouts in history (Randy Johnson), a shortstop who has hit 50 homers two years in a row (A-Rod) and a pitcher with the best winning percentage since World War II (Pedro Martinez).

Or you can see a six-time Cy Young award-winner (Roger Clemens), a 600-homer man (Barry Bonds), the greatest offensive catcher of all time (Mike Piazza) and the first team since World War 1 to start two pitchers who are at least 100 games over .500 (Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine).


In Babe Ruth's day, the game was played by a whole lot of slow white men. Players today are far better athletes and are vastly more culturally and ethnically diverse than they are in any other major sport. Let's broadcast that to the world, huh?


So this isn't an embarrassing age for baseball. In many ways, it's a golden age.

The players love the game
Please, no more talk about how players today don't care the way they did when you were a kid.


Most players today understand exactly how lucky they are to get paid what they do to play a game they love. That's one reason they're not on strike right now.

If fans had any clue how many players get to the ballpark five hours before game time, they'd be stunned.


The game today includes some not just some of the best players ever to play, but some of the best people playing any major sport. There's no reason men like Cliff Floyd, Tom Glavine, Todd Helton, Jeff Bagwell, Scott Rolen, Carlos Delgado, Nomar Garciaparra, Mariano Rivera, Omar Vizquel, Trevor Hoffman, etc., etc. shouldn't be on every kid's Most Admired Athletes list -- except that baseball has done such a great job of keeping them so top-secret.


Let's compare the number of felony charges filed against baseball players with the rap sheets on those NBA and NFL icons. That's a stat that tells you more about baseball players today than OPS.

4. Business ain't so bad, either
We often wonder how much abuse the sport of baseball would take if it went seven years without a team in the second-largest city in the country.

Or if it moved a team out of the fourth-largest city in America to, say, Tennessee.


Or if it played the World Series in a neutral site, and played the All-Star Game on an island 5,000 miles from some of its biggest cities.


Or if the trading deadline came and went but nobody got traded.


We are led to believe these days that the NFL can do no wrong and baseball can do no right. But in fact, baseball is judged far more harshly than any of the other sports.


A lot of that is baseball's own fault, obviously. But it's time for the sport of baseball to remind people it isn't as big a disaster as it often portrays itself.


It's more affordable than those other sports. It has the greatest history of any sport.

You don't have to wade through a week of hype waiting for somebody to actually throw a pitch. It's bursting with cool and beautiful ballparks that blend into the fabric of their cities and neighborhoods. And we'll stack up baseball's competitive-balance record with the NBA's any time anyone wants to play that game.


To sell baseball, no one needs to reinvent the wheel. Just shine up the prettiest wheels in sports and roll them down every street corner. Do us that favor: Let's try it and see what happens.