Apparently One Kind of Baseball Isn’t Enough

For years, one of the standard complaints about baseball has been that it is losing younger fans.

The game is too slow. Too much standing around. Too many pitching changes. Too many games that once stretched well beyond three hours. Somebody raised on smartphones, streaming video, TikTok and seemingly unlimited entertainment choices was supposedly never going to sit still long enough to watch baseball.

I more or less accepted that argument.

Then I started paying attention to the crowds at Major League Baseball games on television.

There are kids everywhere.

Parents are bringing children to the ballpark in surprisingly large numbers, which seems particularly impressive when you consider what it costs to take a family to a professional game. Tickets are only the beginning. Add parking, hot dogs, drinks and maybe a cap or shirt, and you can turn a Tuesday night ballgame into a fairly serious financial decision.

Yet families keep showing up.

And the statistics apparently support what I am seeing. Major League Baseball attendance has been growing again, games have become shorter since the introduction of the pitch clock, and MLB says its ticket buyers and television audiences are getting younger.

So perhaps baseball does not have quite the youth problem I thought it did.

Which makes the Savannah Bananas much more interesting.

The Bananas play something called Banana Ball, which resembles baseball after somebody went through the traditional rule book and asked, “What parts of this game could we change to make sure something entertaining is always happening?”

Games are limited in time. The rules are designed to keep things moving. Players dance. Trick plays are encouraged. Fans sometimes become part of the action. There is music, choreography and a general atmosphere that suggests somebody combined a baseball game with a very energetic variety show.

My first reaction was predictable.

This isn’t baseball. It’s a circus.

Then tens of thousands of people started showing up.

Banana Ball has grown from an odd little baseball experiment into a much larger operation with multiple teams, national television exposure and games in major stadiums. Some crowds have been enormous.

And now it isn’t alone.

There is Cosmic Baseball, played under special lighting with glowing uniforms, bats, balls and bases. There are other experiments beginning to appear as well, and there will almost certainly be more.

At first, I assumed these new versions were attempts to repair something wrong with baseball. If traditional baseball was losing younger audiences, perhaps somebody had decided the answer was to speed it up, add music, make it funny and turn the whole thing into more of an entertainment event.

But that may be the wrong way to look at it.

Traditional baseball appears to be doing reasonably well on its own.

Maybe these new versions aren’t replacing baseball.

Maybe they are expanding it.

Different Games, Different Audiences

We have a tendency to assume that everyone interested in baseball belongs to one audience.

That probably isn’t true anymore.

A lifelong baseball fan may happily spend an afternoon watching a 2–1 game in which the most interesting event is a pitching change in the seventh inning. That person appreciates strategy, statistics, history, pennant races and all of the little things that have accumulated around the game for more than a century.

That same fan might still buy a ticket to see the Savannah Bananas once simply because it sounds like fun.

Another family may have little interest in sitting through a traditional game, but their children may be fascinated by dancing players and constant activity.

Someone else might go to Cosmic Baseball because glowing baseballs under black lights sounds like an entertaining Saturday night, even if that person could not name three Major League players.

Those may be different audiences.

And that could be a very good thing.

We probably should not judge Banana Ball by how many of its fans eventually become Major League Baseball fans. Some undoubtedly will. A child who becomes interested in hitting, pitching and fielding through Banana Ball may eventually discover traditional baseball.

But others probably won’t.

They may simply like Banana Ball.

There is nothing particularly wrong with that.

If Major League Baseball keeps its audience, Banana Ball develops another one, and Cosmic Baseball attracts still another, perhaps the total audience for baseball-related entertainment becomes larger.

That raises an economic question that may be more important than whether any of this is “real baseball.”

Is There Enough Money for Everyone?

Major League Baseball operates in another financial universe.

It has huge television contracts, sponsorships, ticket revenue, concessions, merchandise, gambling relationships and owners with very deep pockets. Players now sign contracts worth amounts of money that would have purchased several franchises when I was younger.

Banana Ball does not need that kind of economics.

It only needs enough revenue to support its teams, players, coaches, travel, production crews and the organization surrounding the games.

Cosmic Baseball may need even less if it remains primarily a touring entertainment event rather than trying to become a conventional professional league.

The venues probably are not the biggest problem either.

Baseball already has an enormous amount of infrastructure sitting around.

Major League stadiums are empty on many days. Minor League parks have open dates. College baseball facilities and independent league stadiums offer still more possibilities. A successful touring baseball attraction does not necessarily need to spend hundreds of millions of dollars building a new stadium.

It can rent one.

The harder question may be how many different baseball experiences people are willing to pay for.

One Banana Ball is unusual.

One Cosmic Baseball is unusual.

If twenty different organizations appear offering funny baseball, glowing baseball, musical baseball and whatever somebody dreams up next, eventually novelty stops being novel.

The Savannah Bananas also have something that is difficult to duplicate.

They have a brand.

People know who they are. They have personalities, social-media followers and an atmosphere that fans specifically want to experience. Copying a few rules and adding music does not automatically create that.

So I suspect there will be room for several versions of baseball entertainment, but probably not an unlimited number.

Which brings us to another question.

Is This Sport or Entertainment?

Professional sports have always been entertainment businesses.

Nobody buys a $150 ticket because society has an urgent need to determine whether the Giants are better than the Dodgers that evening.

We buy tickets because watching the competition is entertaining.

Traditional sports, however, usually treat the competition as the product and everything else as something added around it.

The baseball game comes first.

Then there are mascots, music, scoreboards, contests between innings, food, fireworks and somebody firing T-shirts into the stands with an air cannon.

Banana Ball changes that relationship.

The competition is still real. Players are trying to win, and athletic skill matters. But entertainment is deliberately built into the game itself.

That does not necessarily make it less of a sport.

Traditional sports have been changing their rules for entertainment reasons for years.

Major League Baseball added the pitch clock partly because games had become too slow. Basketball added the shot clock and later the three-point line. Football regularly modifies rules affecting scoring, passing and game flow.

Professional sports have always adjusted the product.

Banana Ball may simply be less subtle about it.

Perhaps the difference is one of degree.

Traditional baseball is a sport with entertainment wrapped around it.

Banana Ball deliberately mixes sport and entertainment together.

Cosmic Baseball may be closer to an entertainment event that happens to use baseball as its framework.

All three can exist.

Maybe More Baseball Is Better

I started thinking about this because I wondered whether all these strange new versions of baseball were evidence that the old game was in trouble.

Instead, I am beginning to think the opposite may be true.

Traditional baseball appears healthy. Attendance is strong again. Games are shorter. Families are still bringing their kids. Younger audiences seem to be showing more interest rather than less.

Meanwhile, other people are experimenting with entirely different ways of experiencing the same basic game.

Some fans will want nine innings, pennant races and statistics.

Some will want dancing players and a two-hour time limit.

Some apparently want the baseball to glow in the dark.

And some of us may enjoy all three.

Maybe baseball is not being fragmented. Maybe its audience is getting bigger.

That leaves one question I am still trying to answer.

At what point does adding entertainment turn baseball into something that is no longer really baseball?

I’m not sure it matters very much.

As long as somebody keeps playing the version where I can still complain about the manager leaving the pitcher in one batter too long, I’m willing to let the rest of them have some fun.