America loves sports, and you can't deny it because there is no way that professional athletes can make millions of dollars dribbling a basketball or running for a touchdown or hitting a home run or slapping the puck past the goalie. I can do all that. Except maybe the home run thing. And ice skating is out of the question.
So it's settled. We like sports. Now the question is which sport do we like the best? Does baseball still reign as America's pastime?
I looked on google.com to find any article on this topic, and I was surprised at the number of articles. Many people think football is closing in on, if it hasn't already, the throne. There' s even one claiming fantasy sports is right there ... I guess. And even (gasp) college football!
There was one I was personally looking for, and I didn't find it. Where was basketball? How could FANTASY SPORTS get more nominations as America's pastime than basketball?
To answer this, we have to find out why baseball is - or was - America's pastime. So let's examine it.
Once upon a time when there were no sports to challenge it, everybody was entranced by baseball -- men hitting a little ball around with a wooden stick and being successful only a third of the time, if you're good. America loved it. But why?
If you imagine the pace of life back in the really good old days, time seemed to just walk by. People had time to live because the pace allowed our grandparents time to think and enjoy life.
Try to stop and smell the roses today and you might get hurt.
People are always in a hurry now. Everything has to be faster. Technology is faster now, cars are faster now, service is faster now and food is cooked faster too. There's no time to stop and think because the person walking behind you probably will run into you.
Basketball is the perfect sport for us today.
We have short attention spans and basketball appeals to that short span. Baseball doesn't have that ability, and football is too sporadic to hold full attention without cheerleaders and pretty sideline reporters.
In basketball, all 48 or 40 or 32 minutes of the game is engulfed with action. The only time a pickup game stops is to catch breath.
I mean, who has time for thinking when you're having fun?
Basketball is indeed America's new pastime because it is the most symbolic of American culture. The fast pace and attention grabber is much like the Budweiser commercials we see on TV, whose purpose is to hypnotize us for ten to thirty seconds at the most. (Anything over that gets the clicker.) Baseball, while still fun to watch, is too slow to be attractive to the average 18- to 25-year-old consumer.
So this Independence Day, instead of fighting off sleep watching the Cubs, go to the gym and play basketball with your friends.
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