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…

The World Cup turned out to be a much bigger event in the United States than many Americans expected. That was true inside the stadiums, where the crowds were enormous and the games often dramatic. But some of the most interesting stories happened outside the stadiums. For several weeks, American cities were filled with visitors wearing national colors, singing songs, carrying flags, and celebrating a sport that much of the world follows with a passion Americans usually reserve for football, baseball, or basketball. The World Cup was about soccer known as football in the rest of the world. But it was also about what happened when much of the world came to visit. Many international fans arrived with impressions of the United States shaped by…