Pastime’s popularity past due but has picked up the pace
Rising exposure of college baseball has helped refuel the sport’s appeal
By Zach Swartz, Sports Editor
May 23, 2007 | noon
If you look out towards the left field wall at Bob Wren Stadium, you can see the list of 14 years when the Ohio University baseball team was the regular season Mid-American Conference champion. Move your gaze to right field, and those same 14 dates appear as the years when the Bobcats appeared in the NCAA tournament. Look out to center field, however, and there is just one date listed: “College World Series Appearances: 1970.”
Although a few students might have been fooled by the football team’s regular season MAC championship and first bowl appearance since 1968 this past winter, it comes as no surprise to most Ohio University students that they are not attending a school known for its spectacular athletic prominence.
The baseball team is no exception to that rule. Even though the Bobcat baseballers can boast the most MAC regular season championships and coach Joe Carbone has the second-most wins in MAC history, the Ohio baseball squad is nowhere close to being a national powerhouse on the diamond.
Before recently, many people would not have noticed this fact, and many more probably would not have cared if they had observed it. For so long the idea of baseball was synonymous with pro-ball, and if one wanted to watch a baseball game on TV, the 30 Major League teams were almost always the only ones to be found outside of local stations. College baseball, it seemed, was doomed to get no more coverage than intramural softball.
But in the past decade or so the world of baseball has undergone a change. ESPN shows not only College World Series games but regular season games as well, and they post national rankings of the top 25 teams in America. EA Sports has just come out with its second version of MVP NCAA Baseball. Even 12-year-olds are put on national TV to compete in front of thousands of people every year in the Little League World Series. Not even American powerhouse sports of football and basketball can boast such coverage as that.
The increase in exposure of America’s old pastime is undoubtedly revolution as well as evolution. No matter how many old-timers refuse to admit it, baseball no longer holds the allure that it once did in the eyes of the public. College football, the NFL and even the NBA have stolen much of baseball’s spotlight and left it in the dust of its dirt playing field. “It’s too slow,” many say; “Nothing ever happens,” others complain. And in the world of today that demands fast food and action movies, it can sometimes seem that baseball can’t keep up the pace.
This is undeniably the reason for baseball’s recent exposure augmentation, but there is still one catch that comes with it. It has been the general public’s opinion of baseball that has changed, never the outlook of avid baseball fans. Baseball stadiums still sell out, kids still line the front rows before games searching for autographs, and most people are still familiar with names like A-Rod, Ken Griffey, Jr., or Barry Bonds. The game is in no danger of dying out by any means, and most of those who play the sport play it admittedly for the love of the game.
Ohio University senior second baseman Bryant Witt, for one, believes that the rising coverage of the sport is not the most important thing. “I don’t really look at it as anything in particular,” he said. “I just come out here and play. If we’re on TV, great; if not, you don’t play for the people in the stands or TV—you keep on playing.”
The increased coverage and publicity of college baseball is limited, however. Big conference teams from the south dominate ESPN coverage, and over 20 of the USA Today/ESPN Coaches’ top 25 teams are from southern or western states. The MAC, along with many other conferences, is not included yet in EA Sports’ video games, and even though schools that are not prominent in other sports like Rice University and the University of California Riverside are often included among NCAA baseball’s best, large conference teams from the Big Ten or Big East rarely crack the top 25.
This doesn’t make a difference for some.
Jeremie Rehak, freshman speedster and utilityman for the Bobcats, and Willie Walker, a senior center fielder, agreed that the increase in collegiate exposure is a good thing despite their team’s limited involvement in it.
“The MAC’s not in [MVP ’07 NCAA Baseball],” said Rehak, “but I can’t wait till they are so we can be in it.”
Nevertheless, OU’s limited exposure has not been a deterrent to players who want to play Division 1 baseball. Marc Krauss, a freshman slugger and first baseman for the ‘Cats, was recently named to the Wallace Watch list, a list of the top 112 players in America contending for the Brooks Wallace Player of the Year Award. Recent Ohio graduates Adam Fox, Corey Keylor, and Adam Russell are playing in the AA affiliates of the Texas Rangers, Boston Red Sox, and Chicago White Sox, respectively. The fact that OU is a Midwestern school is by no means a determinant of the quality of players that it can develop and deliver to the next level.
“I came in, and one reason why I came was that it was [Division] 1, but I just wanted to prove I could play here, and I was going to do anything to get on the field,” Witt said.
When it all comes down to it, getting on the field is really what it’s all about. Baseball fans will be baseball fans will be baseball fans, and those who enjoy the game, no matter whether they enjoy playing it, watching it, or broadcasting it, will most likely always support it.
It doesn’t matter that OU’s only appearance in the CWS was almost 40 years ago. At least nowadays people know what it is.