By Darcy MacRae
With every passing day baseball fans know a looming darkness is closing in.
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The threat of yet another strike by major league baseball players is quickly becoming a reality, with mid-August reportedly targeted as the date the world?s best baseball players will walk off the job for the second time in eight years.
Every baseball analyst, broadcaster, player, and owner admits they are afraid of what another work stoppage will do to an already thin fan base. Everyone involved seems to be aware another strike could drive fans away for good, but there is one thing they all seem to be overlooking.
The one aspect of this strike that everyone is forgetting about is what it will do to baseball at the grassroots level, in places such as Sudbury.
At first glance it may seem silly to worry about how striking million-dollar baseball players will affect us. After all, the city has numerous baseball and softball teams on the go, and appears to be a place that likes the sport. But what will happen to baseball?s popularity here when young participants of the game develop a sour taste in the mouths regarding the sport because their heroes continually let them down?
My guess is young players will gradually lose interest in baseball if another strike occurs.
Kids and adults alike have no intention of rooting for a bunch of overpaid crybabies that walk out as soon as something doesn?t go their way.
Once young players lose interest in following the sport, it will only be a matter of time before they also lose interest in playing the game of baseball.
If communities such as Sudbury don?t have a solid core of young kids participating in baseball, it is inevitable that the sport will eventually die out here. Simply put, if kids don?t want to play baseball when they are young, then they are not going to want to start doing so when they are adults.
Once this happens the sport will become only a distant memory in a city that once loved taking to the field for some batting practice and to catch a few fly balls.
Kids in cities like Sudbury already have numerous options when it comes to sporting activities. Soccer and football are already popular throughout North America, and will welcome new members to the their game after kids decide they would rather not have anything to do with baseball anymore.
For evidence of this we need not look any further that the recent World Cup of Soccer.
Already kids playing in the streets are imitating soccer stars like Ronaldo and Rivaldo instead of greedy baseball players like Alex Rodriguez.
With each World Cup young fans are becoming all the more enchanted with the game of soccer, while at the same time becoming more and more disgusted with the game of baseball.
I hope we never see the day when baseball becomes extinct in places like Sudbury, but I honestly think it will if Major League Baseball players and owners don?t get their act together.
If these two sides cannot agree on something soon, then baseball in North America will never be the same.
