Why do we need the things we love to grow? Why can’t we let them live and die of their own accord?
It’s a trend I’ve noticed in both baseball and movies. Baseball fans are obsessed with growing the sport. Movie buffs wants to expand the film’s popularity, and return cinema to its former place atop American culture.
I ask again: Why?
Let’s start with baseball. If you haven’t heard, there are numerous rule changes coming to the sport this year, all of which were designed to bring in new fans who would otherwise be turned off the game’s relatively slow pace and lack of action. The running game will be encouraged through larger actual bases and limiting a pitcher’s pickoff attempts. A pitch clock will return the pace of play to what it was when I was a kid, before batters stepped out of the box after every two seconds and pitchers started taking little walks around the mound to collect their thoughts. Oh, and the extra-inning rule in which each teams start each inning with a runner on second base? That’s permanent now.
These changes have been a long time coming, which is to say that fans, journalists, and baseball insiders have been complaining that the game is too slow and too long for years. It’s based on the assumption—and I suppose MLB has some data to back this up—that younger viewers don’t have the patience for a sport that moves at a glacial pace. If that’s true, I can understand why owners would urge a change. Baseball is their business, and they need customers to ensure their investment is protected long-term. I can also understand why journalists would want a shorter, faster game. Baseball is their job. Nobody wants to be bored at work, and everybody wants to go home early.
What I don’t understand is why fans are on board with all these changes. Isn’t the whole point of baseball that it hasn’t changed that much since you were a kid? That it’s the same game your parents played? Proponents of these new rules will argue that the goal is actually to do just that. They’ll claim that the game has evolved in unhelpful ways, and that these changes will return it to the more action-oriented, faster-paced game it used to be. They seem to be forgetting about the Law of Unintended Consequences. I’m not a proponent of trying to manufacture the past. I don’t support Making Baseball Great Again. You can’t turn back the clock. All you can do is let things evolve in a natural way. A few key changes aside, that’s what baseball has historically done. And they have *never* instituted so many changes at once.
Businesses need to grow. A game just needs to be played. If MLB’s fanbase continues to shrink over the years, even if MLB itself had to disband one day, the game of baseball will not die. Its beauty will persist. Maybe it will revert to being played by Gentleman’s Clubs (as it was in the 1850s), or on sandlots and inner city playgrounds. The dissolution of the New York Mets would make me sad, but nothing lasts forever, and baseball is a beautiful sport wherever and whenever it is played.
Last year, I had some time to kill while my wife and in-laws were watching a local orchestra play an outdoor concert (the music of Judy Garland, I believe), so I strolled across the park and watched a Little League game. It was awesome. The quality of the play was admitted low, but so what? The kids were trying. The coaches coaching. Sure, there weren’t may barrels, and every ground ball was a triple because it went through two or three defenders. But it was real baseball, and even if that was all the baseball I had, I think I’d be okay. I might even be happier.
I often have the same thought about movies. In the last several years, there has been much handwringing over the future of cinema. Movies theaters were on life support during COVID. Many editorials were written on the death of the theatrical experience, but I’ve never been worried about cinema’s future. It has survived numerous threats before—television, the House Un-American Activities Committee, VHS, the internet. It’s still here, and every year I have no trouble filling out a Top 10 or Top 20 or Top 22 with fantastic movies.
It's a particularly hot topic at this time of year because it’s Oscars time, a convenient moment for the hand-wringers to complain that the Academy isn’t doing enough to draw casual movie fans to the ceremony. I think they’re doing a lot. They expanded the field of Best Picture nominees from 5 to 10, which has led to more box-office hits being nominated every year (this year, there were at least three: Avatar 2, Top Gun, and Elvis). Getting more eyes on the telecast was also behind last year’s embarrassing “Cheers Moment” at the Oscars, which brought director Zack Snyder’s internet army into the telecast for a brief moment. Sometimes they go too far.
Again, I can understand why the industry wants more people to watch Oscars, and why they might think it’s worth denigrating the ceremony to do so (a case could be made that it’s impossible to denigrate an awards show, but I digress). But why do cinephiles care so much about creating more movie buffs? Why do we need to turn MCU fans into Godardians? Why does everyone have to love movies like we do? Why can’t we just let cinema evolve—or even devolve—into whatever it becomes?
As consumers, we’ve been indoctrinated to think like CEOs. We’ve spent too much time thinking about the business side of the things we love. We know too much about baseball’s front offices. We’ve played fantasy sports for too long. We’ve read too much awards coverage and not enough film criticism. We’ve come to believe being a fan of something means protecting it from the natural ebbs and flows of the market and time and life and death.
Cinema will never die. Movies will always be made. The idea of capturing life in motion is too powerful. Baseball will live forever because a kid will always want to throw a rock at another kid, and that other kid will always pick up a stick and try to bat it away. But you can’t turn back the clock to when movies and baseball were the biggest things in America, just like you can’t go back to when you were young and carefree and your back didn’t hurt every morning when you got out of bed. If you try, you’re likely to break your heart. So relax, and be happy that baseball and cinema exist. If we really love them as much as we say we do, that should be enough.
I enjoy your love letters to baseball, and to movies, so much, Noah.
Personally, I am with you. Rule changes should be like constitutional amendments.