Thanks for the clarification. I typed Wisconsin just as a through-off and I really didn’t know that they had dropped baseball. I missed Lamar’s reference to Wisconsin.
This fact really cements what I said. U of Wisconsin is a huge university with very successful athletic programs. Their football, basketball and hockey programs are typically top contenders in their leagues. They are not running on a shoestring. So apparently, at some point they asked themselves why they should plow money into baseball when there was almost no chance of succeeding against places like the Florida, Texas, Oklahoma, Arizona and California programs. That’s just good business.
I plan on going to some IU baseball games eventually. I just took a look at the roster; turns out the nephew of former Yankee Chuck Knoblauch is on the team.
And Wayne Gretzky’s son just signed with the Cubs. Funny thing is, his oldest son was at a prep school in Minnesota and couldn’t make the varsity hockey team.
That’s not meant to be an insult, just an observation on some of the nuances of sports. Hey, the White Sox organization signed Michael Jordan and assigned him to Birmingham, where he was almost miserable but sold a lot of tickets. The Yankees had Dale Berra (Yogi’s son) on the roster until he proved to be so bad they had to release him. Where’s Pete Rose’s son? Send out and APB for a missing person.
I’ve wondered the same thing myself–there are some good theories in this thread. As an LSU alum and huge fan, I’ve always loved the college baseball season. I’ll even stream LSU baseball games off the internet.
But LSU is one of the comparatively few schools that can pack 'em in. New facilities and stadium, and every year there’s always a chance they could win it all again. They’ve won, what, 6 championships in the last 20 years?
I think for a lot of schools, following the baseball team would be like following the wrestling team.
-Games tend to be played in the daytime, which are difficult for many to attend
-As stated previously, there are minor league teams in many of the same cities/regions as major universities (i.e. UT-Austin and Round Rock), whereas there isn’t a professional football team within hours
-With increasing number of games, each game loses its importance–the opposite of football where every game can make or break a team. Why drive hours to watch 2% of a team’s season?
Even the most successful college baseball teams only draw about 7-8k per game, whereas the top-flight college basketball teams draw 10 or 12k per game. Clearly there are a number of factors at play suppressing the popularity of baseball.
Why is it necessary for them to use anything other than wood at all? All levels of baseball should be played with wooden bats. Why isn’t it? Just make everyone do it, from T-ball on up!
I wonder what the incidence of broken bats would be if they got rid of maple bats and went only with ash, and changed dimension of the bats so they weren’t so barrel-heavy.
Then gain, IIRC the frequency of bat breaking is independent of the type of wood used, but maple bats have a tendency to break into shards while ash just cracks.
There’s also a substance that you can use to coat wood bats to prevent breaking, but it seems this would also deaden the bat so you would have shenanigans with teams not wanting to use it.
College football is where you’ll find the absolute very best 18-21 year old football players in the world. College basketball or the NBA is where you’ll find the very best 18-21 year old basketball players. But to find the very best young baseball players, you have to go to pro games (A, AA, AAA). With baseball’s draft rules, you’ll even find a lot of the very top players in junior colleges. Simply put, NCAA baseball does not include the most talented players of that age.
Dale Berra doesn’t really fit on that list; he was a first-round pick and had a ten-year career cut short in part because of a cocaine habit. He wasn’t a novelty act.
High school baseball is also generally less popular and less publicized than high school football or basketball. This leads me to think that the primary “problem” with school baseball, at any level, is not professional competition but rather the simple fact that school isn’t in session during the height of the baseball season.
Well, at that time, it wasn’t quite so rosy. In 1991, the athletic department wasn’t in great financial shape, and was trying to figure out how to comply with Title IX. Barry Alvarez had just become coach of the football team in 1990, and both the football and basketball teams had been mediocre, at best, for a couple of decades (the hockey team, OTOH, had been very good throughout). So, they cut baseball, as well as gymnastics and fencing (the latter two sports had both men’s and women’s teams).
I wonder if any team was more wrecked by coke than the Pirates. They were a model organization for years and years that fell apart in the early 80s. Everyone sucked all of a sudden, and the fact that the Pirates clubhouse had more cocaine than Tony Montana’s office surely can’t be mere coincidence.
Tell me about it.. try going to a high school on the southside of Chicago and trying to talk girls into coming to a game when its 50 degrees outside lol.
BTW other notables who skipped minors.. Bob Horner.. Steve Kemp.. Big Ben Mcdonald. It really works here in the south for the weather reasons. I’ve taken my kid to GaTech games and find its fun to watch. I’m really happy with the work they did on the bats this year… it was gettin to the point where MLB scouts couldn’t make real judgements on power hitters..