Man, ESPN really thinks this Mitchell Report is a big deal, huh? Dedicating HOURS of coverage yesterday to the release of George Mitchell’s report on his investigation into steroids in baseball. And yet when a co-worker asked me about the Mitchell Report and its list of names, I had a difficult time masking my indifference about the story. I really, truly, honestly, don’t care about major league baseball, its players, the players’ association, the union. I don’t care about baseball, period. And I probably never will.

I suspect that while many of you don’t share my vitriol for America’s Favorite Past time, my guess is that if you’re really honest with yourself, when was the last time you watched a baseball game from beginning to end? That’s what I thought. Say what you want about hockey and its dwindling fan base, baseball’s die hard fanbase is an equally fringe crowd. You can’t have a casual interest in baseball. The season is too long, there’s no competitive balance and the regular season games are boring and insignificant. Frankly, I’ve watched more televised golf and soccer in the last 12 months than I’ve watched baseball.

Steroids in baseball, like the sport itself, is a media-driven entity. This is the case for a couple reason but none more pertinent than the fact that the media was asleep at the wheel through much of the steroid era and now there’s no way they’re not going to over-cover this story. But baseball, as a sport, is largely irrelevant, falling far behind the NFL and even college football in popularity among the vast majority of American sports fans.

Major League Baseball owes a great deal of gratitude to the Worldwide Leader for continuing to talk, at mind-numbing length, about their sport.

This entry was posted on Friday, December 14th, 2007 at 8:30 am and is filed under ESPN, Major League Baseball. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. Both comments and pings are currently closed.