Brendan, you The Decision watching, McRib eating, BOGO buying, ladies drink free, gimmick lover. Using a gimmick to sell a product is an implicit admission that the product isn’t worth your time.
Baseball has tried gimmicks and, from Monday Night Baseball, to yellow baseballs, to chemically enhanced boppers, they were all decided failures. Villains crafted on Madison Avenue are gimmicks, plain and simple. There is nothing genuine about LeBron James or his new found “popularity” with the Heatles. Heck, he is even selling himself as the villain now because, he has realized that it will make people pay attention. But, no one seems to ask if that is the kind of attention the game needs.
What happens if the Heat win? Don’t all the “new” fans that flocked to The Finals to hate LeBron go back to what they were doing? Wouldn’t basketball be better served by selling those fans on their product? I mean, this is probably the most entertaining NBA Finals in 5 or 6 years. But the NBA hasn’t mentioned that because it is easier to just sell the villain angle.
Baseball would be making the same mistake. Let’s just enjoy what Bryce does on the diamond. People want to see that. Baseball doesn’t need a villain because the game is healthy and entertaining. People are watching and coming to the yard and the game seems like it has totally recovered from the steroids mess.
This is no time to take a big part of the next generation, and turn him into the McRib. I mean, in the end, isn’t the wise move going to always be the opposite of what LeBron does? I just hate that guy.
Sorry Mark, but if villiany is bad in baseball then the Trop frothing at the mouth and screaming “Yankees Suck” doesn’t happen. The headlines of Papi flipping his bat in New York and later getting beaned don’t happen. We like villiany and rivalry. Everyone loves to hate A-Rod, Manny, Milton Bradley, Zambrano…etc.
I’m not arguing that villiany doesn’t exist in baseball. I am just saying it doesn’t have to exist for baseball to be popular. More specifically, it doesn’t have to be fabricated like everything Heat-y.
I respect your old-school menality towards the sport, but how can you look at attendance numbers (not just our beloved Trop…I’m talking all of MLB) and say that baseball doesn’t need a revival. It’s mind-numbingly slow at times, especially these last two seasons being the years of the pitcher which generally make for boring games for casual fans. The made-up rivalries are just pathetic (Rays-Marlins…really?)
Hell, I think MLB is actually secretely making the umpires everyone’s villians and marketing it as “human error is baseball”.
Look, baseball is caught in between tradition and trying to catch-up. It’s like the awkward adolescence of a teenager, when they don’t know how to act like a young adult or a kid anymore. Do one or the other, but doing half of each just makes the sport lose fans on both sides of the street.
I can’t stand the NBA. The socceresque flops are a joke and their officiating is only slightly worse than MLB’s. That being said, I read the reports on these finals because I enjoyed reading the villian factor. I still didn’t watch a single game of the NBA finals, but I at least knew who was in it this year.
A fair point but, I think we are all obsessing too much about attendance as evidence of interest. Looking around, it seems like we are in a post-attendance area (thank you expensive TVs) and the sports world is going to have to find a way to capitalize on non-attendance fan interest.