They killed it. They took the most beautiful game ever invented and turned it into a three-hour commercial interrupted by occasional moments of athletic performance. Baseball—real baseball, the kind that lived in your bones and played in your dreams—is dead. What we have now is some bastardized corporate zombie wearing its uniform, shambling around major league stadiums like a theme park attraction that’s forgotten what it was supposed to be about.

I grew up when baseball was still baseball. When I was eight years old, my most prized possession wasn’t a PlayStation or an iPhone—it was a 1979 Topps Rusty Kuntz card. Rusty fucking Kuntz, utility outfielder for the Chicago White Sox. Today they want the flashy shit, the Instagram highlights, the home run celebrations that last longer than some entire at-bats used to.

The Soundtrack of Summer

Back then, baseball was the background music of American life. My old man would have the game on the radio while he worked in the garage or mowed the lawn or just sat on the back porch with a beer, letting the rhythm of the game wash over him like a prayer.

Those voices. Jesus, those voices. Red Barber, Mel Allen, Ernie Harwell—they didn’t need gimmicks or catchphrases or sound effects. They painted pictures with words, turned a simple ground ball to short into poetry, made you see the game even when you couldn’t see the game. They were storytellers, not entertainers. They understood that their job was to enhance the experience, not become the experience.

Now? Now we’ve got clowns in the booth treating every broadcast like it’s amateur hour at the Catskills. They’ve got nicknames for everything, sound effects for every play, and opinions about shit that has nothing to do with what’s happening between the lines. They talk more about what the players had for breakfast than they do about situational hitting. It’s like listening to a podcast that occasionally acknowledges there’s a baseball game happening nearby.

The Death of Small Ball

The game itself—the actual playing of baseball—has been strip-mined of everything that made it beautiful. It used to be chess played with leather and wood. Now it’s just batting practice with a scoreboard.

Home runs used to mean something. When Reggie Jackson hit three in a row in the ’77 World Series, it was front-page news for a week. When Mike Schmidt hit 48 in 1980, that was a goddamn event. Now these steroid-pumped gladiators hit 50 and nobody bats an eye. The ball leaves the yard and half the crowd is looking at their phones, posting videos of hot dogs they’re about to eat.

What happened to the hit-and-run? The suicide squeeze? The perfectly executed double steal? Gone, all of it, sacrificed on the altar of launch angle and exit velocity and all the other NASA-level bullshit that’s turned baseball into a video game played by human beings.

Every at-bat is the same now: swing for the fences or strike out trying. No more working the count, no more fouling off tough pitches, no more battle between pitcher and hitter that could last ten, twelve pitches and tell a whole story. It’s binary: home run or strikeout. Success or failure. No middle ground, no art, no subtlety.

I used to know the starting lineup of every American League team. Not just the stars—the role players, the bench guys, the utility infielders who could turn a double play and lay down a bunt when it mattered. Now half these guys change teams every year like they’re playing musical chairs, and the other half are so specialized they can only hit left-handed relievers on Tuesdays in July.

The Stadium Experience from Hell

Don’t take me out to the ballpark. What used to be a temple to the game has become a cross between Disney World and a shopping mall, with a little baseball thrown in as an afterthought.

You want to watch a game? First, mortgage your house to pay for parking.

Then there are the tickets themselves. Upper deck seats that used to cost five bucks now run you fifty, and that’s if you’re lucky enough to avoid the “dynamic pricing” scam that adjusts costs based on how many suckers are willing to pay. Want decent seats? You need to know someone whose company has season tickets.

But the real torture begins once you’re inside. Every break in action—and there are more breaks than a European soccer match—is filled with ear-splitting music, scoreboard games that insult your intelligence, and promotional giveaways sponsored by companies that have nothing to do with baseball.

Between every pitch, some DJ who peaked in high school is blasting hip-hop at volumes that would violate the Geneva Convention. God forbid there should be a moment of quiet reflection, a chance to actually think about what you’re watching. No, we need constant stimulation, constant noise, constant distraction from the fact that a pretty good game is trying to break out despite all the corporate horseshit.

The Concession Stand Pilgrimage

And the food. Christ almighty, the food. Going to a baseball game used to mean a hot dog, peanuts, and Cracker Jack. Simple, traditional, part of the ritual. Now every stadium is a culinary adventure designed to separate you from your paycheck as efficiently as possible.

Artisanal sausages for fifteen dollars. Craft beer that costs more than dinner used to. Sushi at the ballpark—fucking sushi! These people have turned watching baseball into a food tour with occasional athletic entertainment.

Half the crowd spends more time in line for concessions than they do watching the game. They’re up and down constantly, turning every row into a parade of asses and excuses. “Sorry, sorry, excuse me”—the most common words heard at modern ballparks, usually from someone carrying seventy dollars worth of nachos and beer back to their seat just in time to miss a double play.

The Economics of Extortion

Five hundred dollars for a family day at the ballpark. Five hundred fucking dollars. For a game that used to be the people’s sport, the democratic pastime that anybody could afford. Now it’s entertainment for the expense-account crowd, corporate types who spend more time networking than watching and treat the whole thing like a business meeting with better snacks.

The working families who built this sport, who passed down their love of the game from father to son like a family heirloom—they’re priced out. They’re watching on TV, if they’re watching at all, while their seats are filled by people who wouldn’t know a balk from a baloney sandwich but can afford the freight.

The Mighty Casey Has Indeed Struck Out

So here we are, watching the death throes of something that used to matter. Baseball isn’t dying from lack of talent—these guys are better athletes than ever. It’s dying from lack of soul, lack of connection to what made it special in the first place.

The game that gave us “The only real game in the world” and “Say it ain’t so, Joe” has been replaced by launch angles and luxury boxes. The sport that produced Casey at the Bat now gives us players who flip their bats after routine fly balls and celebrate strikeouts like they’ve just discovered fire.

Maybe I’m just another old bastard yelling at clouds, pining for a past that probably wasn’t as perfect as I remember it. But I swear there was something different about those summer afternoons with the radio crackling and my dad explaining why the hit-and-run was on with runners at first and second. There was magic in knowing that Rusty Kuntz was patrolling right field for the White Sox, even if he never hit .300 or made an All-Star team.

That magic is gone now, buried under corporate sponsorships and dynamic pricing and music loud enough to wake the dead. Baseball didn’t die of natural causes—it was murdered, slowly and methodically, by people who thought they could improve on perfection.

The mighty Casey has indeed struck out. And this time, there’s no joy in Mudville, because Mudville’s been turned into a shopping mall with a baseball diamond in the middle, and nobody can afford the tickets anyway.