Baseball baseball - Major League Baseball is back!

Major League baseball has been as big a part of spring as flowering trees, daffodils and tulips for over onehundred and twenty five years. The coming of the beaseball season is usually eagerly awaited by baseball fans across our country as well as around the world. The question I want to ask is does anyone really care anymore. has the putrid stench of steroids and other perfprmance enhanciong drugs forever tainted baseball? For me it has.

The thirty baseball teams that comprise the highest level of the American professional beaseball league hope that this scandal can be overcome. After all there are 2,430 baseball games played in major league ball every season in which the owners of the highest league of pro baseball want to generate full stadiums and sufficient merchandise sales to keep their operation afloat.

Baseball baseball, where have you gone wrong? Was it not testing soon enough or not moving fast enough when a problem was identified. Can you overcome the stigma to regain your place as America's favorite game? I think that ship has sailed with the Lords of the Gridiron taking the helm. In the world of professional sports baseball will always hold a major position, but I fear the heyday of the sport may have passed.

Can we use television ratings to analyze the mood of fans across the country about their favorite baseball team? Probably not as there are so many factors that plya into the television ratings arena. Baseball tv watchers will always be there in some quantity due to the fact that fans cannot always attend the ball games due either to the availability of baseball tickets, the price of baseball tickets or the physicak proximity of the fan to their team's home park.

The ratings of all telelvision programs is down due to the explosion of ways television can be accessed these days. The baseball schedule is tailored to make the most of the television opportunities and that has not changed, but the viwereship continues to splinter as the internet offers so many more options to baseball fans. On one hand it is possible for a fan in Washington state to see every game of his beloved Florida Marlins due to the internet, but the traditional televsion ratings do not qualtify this data.

Baeseball is not as exciting on television as it is in person. There is no smells and sounds of the ball park to round out your experience, so the folks that watch baseball from their couch at home are usually the hard core fans. The baseball schedule can be found in daily newspapers along with what channel you can watch baseball games of your favorite team, so these hard core fans are sure not to miss a moment.

What about ticket sales, are they an accurate gauge of the feelings of the average fan about the state of baseball? According to the numbers we have to analyze the concusion is at best a mixed bag. As with the television ratings there are just too many factors affecting this matter to draw a definitive conclusion.

The economy makes a big impact on the amount of people spinning the turnstiles at the major league parks. No pro baseball ticket is cheap, even though there are 81 home baseball games per team each season. People have had to learn to be discriminating about where their dollars go, so this is one possible factor to consider in making any assumptions.

Even with the bad economy people are still going to seek entertainment opportunities and baseball is a great one. Spending three hours outside in the sunshine and warm air is beneficial to everyone, even if you are not sure just how legitimate the acts of physical strength in front of you may be.

Let's face it, the media drives a lot of the perception we have about ball players these days. It makes sense because very few of us will ever know a professional baseball player, so we must trust the media to present the heroes of pro baseball in an honest, fact filled manner. While shiving the baseball scores while giving us the quick synopsis of baseball games the guys and gals behind the fancy desks give their organization's view of the player, which we consume and have to decide if we agree or disagree with their analysis.

As with any such decision, multiple sources should be sought to make the best determination about how legitimate the baseball player's skill is. If we allow our independent opinion to be colored by the misguided perception of a particular segment of the media we may discount an athlete that is actually an impressive physical specimen who can master this game.

Keep in mind that for many media types the key thing they look at is the amount of eyeballs they can catch. This means the more senational the view they offer, the more likely some quantity of people are to choose their broadcast. Integrity in theri information cannot be easily verified by us, the fans, so we must place a bit of caution in taking their words completely as the gospel.

I am not sure if I speak for every fan, but all the revelations of steroid or performance enhancing drugs has certaily significantly lessened my interest in baseball. Baseball players use to hold a very special place in the lives of young fans all over our country and many places in the world. That has changed with the knowledge that much of the accomplishments were literally a sham.

This coupled with the massive increase in home runs over the steriod drama took a lot of the joy out of baseball for me. A home run is fun to watch, but not when you know it comes not from the player's skill or workout routine but from some pill bottle. This along with the ESPN SportsCenter habit of condensing every game down to the homeruns and flashly plays just kind of leaves you feeling empty.

Players like Mark McGwire, Sammy Sosa and Rafael Plameiro just totally devalued the place of great diamond heros with the fans of today. The bright young talent like Albert Pujols and Ryan Howard may be legitimate power hitters, but due to their peers like Alex Rodriguez and Manny Ramirez who were exposed during the 2009 season we will always have our doubts.

Personally I choose to like guys like Ichiro Suzuki, the guys who opund out massive numbers of hits, but few homers. Is this a total vindication that they do not "juice up"? No. We can never really know who is clean because everyone delcares their innicence until incontrovertible evidence is leaked to the media.

Perhaos the most of you are not as jaded as I am. I just get disturbed about someone making so much money to play a game and then cheating. I expect it is part of the race to grab the most cash during their careers. Home runs and runs batted in are two key offensive statistics that are used to put value with a player. Taking these human growth horomones adds to the player's strnegth, which yields more long hits, so the problem may be a perpetual one.

So what is the future of pro baseball? According to what we have seen in recent years the threat of suspensions like the one Manny Ramirez received in 2009 may deter more players from trying steroids to begin with. Perhaps as more see that others are not doing it there will not be the preception that is necessary to keep pace.

Baseball tickets will continue to be sold for years to come as fans forgive and forget like they do when their team does not compete one year but gets things together to be a darling of everyone the next season. All star baseball games have always and probably always will enjoy great attendance as well as serviceable television ratings. Even with the mix of interleague baseball people still thrill to see guys that are not as familiar with each other face off in the midsummer classic.

People will find newer ways to watch baseball, either on the internet or their mobile devices, much the way they do everything else. I am sure the officials of baseball and the broadcast media will do whatever it takes to hold on to their share of the audience if not try to increase it. These tenets of the baseball world will never change.

Major league baseballs will still be prized by little guys that are too young to understand the implications of the "juicing" controversy. If baseball habndles tings right they could wipe away this smear and return baseball to a higher level of prominence in American sports. The question is, when will this begin? Will it be during Bud Seligs run as commissioner. We shall see, baseball fans, we shall see.