I've seen this game before

and I want it to end

Nearly 30 years ago, my high school football team was great. Our only two losses that season were to the undefeated state champs and the state-runner up that finished with one loss (in the championship game).

We were good. Great teammates.

I had a limited role on that team, but I loved practice. I got to challenge myself every day against the best football players in the state. I held my own.

Every day. I loved every second of it, even though I didn't always make the play. It was my chance to challenge myself.

I always had a chance to get better. I took advantage of it.

Perhaps that's the essence of sports—the ability to bounce back and rise to the challenge after a temporary setback. I don't know. There are many theories out there.

But that season was a strange one in that it was all football. I was, and am, a huge baseball fan, but from August on, there was no Major League Baseball. They cancelled the season and the World Series.

In a typical year, after practice, I would typically tune into the pennant chase and the playoffs and World Series. I'd watch as much baseball on TV as I could and read about it in my magazines. Not so much in 1994.

My focus was football (and school to some degree).

I learned a lot about football that year. More importantly, it was a time where my teammates were the most important thing for me. No baseball to distract me.

Fast-forward three decades and this year is the first year in my life where I haven't been consumed with baseball in some shape or form.

I watched the World Baseball Classic in the spring, knowing that it might be the last time I could watch a game that even resembled the game I grew up with. It was pretty good, but not great.

As always, I watched the All-Star Game, but it was a far cry from anything enjoyable. I used to literally tape those games to watch back later when I was a boy. This year was a real dud.

It could be a factor of getting older, but I think it is really a function of the "neediness" of the powers that be in the professional baseball ranks.

They cite viewership and attendance numbers being up this year. And their all-important metric of Time of Game is way down. "Success!" they say.

A bunch of new rules contributed to these superficial "achievements." I could go into detail, but I've written and podcasted about it over the course of the year.

Bottom line, Baseball™ concerned itself with getting more "casual fans" to tune in and show up at games. They've done a good job. But they've abandoned their core demographic—baseball fans.

In the quest to bring in more fans, and thus more revenue, Baseball™ has exposed its neediness—a quality that is, well, not a quality at all.

In these pages lately, we've mentioned Maslow's hierarchy of needs. "Neediness" is looking outside that pyramid to things we can't control.

The late, great negotiation expert, Jim Camp, stood firmly against neediness in a negotiation. Baseball™ (and all sports, really) are engaged in arms-length negotiations with the American public. Negotiations nonetheless.

My choice as an adversary within this negotiation structure is to now ... not care that much. I don't like what they've done to the sport.

And thanks to studying Jim Camp's methods, I'm comfortable with my decision not to particularly care.

For more on what I'm talking about, check out my Jim Camp reference page:

As always,

Brian

P.S.— I write this as I have an American League playoff game on in the background. I'm not going to let them rip away all that I hold dear. But, I have the sound off, checking in here and there to observer the timeless (?) rhythms of the game that I love. Hopefully, this dismal state of the sport doesn't last for eternity, but I am prepared to watch even less if pushed that way.