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Baseball has more competition now than it ever has. Baseball cards (and other sports) are too expensive to collect and are geared to the high roller collectors. There's not much fun in it anymore.
Dealers buy 80's-90's cards for $1 per 1000 and sell them for $1.50 per 1000. So basically there is no (pre-owned) baseball card market from the last 30 years. It's turned into a lottery game of chance at best. If fans want to gamble they can make real bets with much better odds or join a pay-fantasy baseball site.
Baseball itself is what America was. Football is what America is. That says it all.
As for the cards, when was it that baseball started having people stand in line to collect signatures of back benchers for 10 bucks? I found that offensive when I first saw that in the 80's.
To paraphrase the late great Herb Cain, you used to give it away and now you charge an arm and a leg for it. Welcome to the fully realized world of free market capitalism.
Football has a huge issue with ever and ever bigger players crushing more and more skulls. Its great now but boxing used to be great too. Wealthy parents are turning their kids away from it and to other sports. I can safely say it is not where America is going to be in 10 years. Maybe 'Merica though but then it would be foo'ball.
I think baseball could make a comeback. It's a more social game for spectators. Soccer is still decried as an "evil commie plot" in the South. Baseball is seen as the alternative to foo'ball in many small towns even though basketball is cheaper and has the winter all to itself. The main issue I see with baseball is the groundskeeping expense for local youth clubs. It used to be the American Legion or Kiwanis could take up the expense and help maintain the field. Bats, balls, gloves, ect. aren't too expensive for basic equipment and can be shared in a league.
American Legion and Kiwanis are slowly dying out. It used to be they would have adult teams and/or leagues that would play baseball but softball has taken over for the adult set. With those dying out, so goes the funding for youth ballparks. If MLB or minor league clubs can come up with a solution outside of inner city neighborhoods, that would help.
It would be great for the MLB to start winning over some of the more athletic football and basketball players. It shouldn't be that hard of a sell, being the only sport that will pay a player right out of high school. Plus the free agent contracts are enormous, for both superstars and mediocre players. And the contracts are guaranteed, unlike in the NFL.
Point guards, small forwards, quarterbacks, wide receivers and defensive backs....come on over to the good life. You shall be rewarded handsomely.
The biggest problem facing baseball IMO is the sport paces itself too slow. Now baseball has always been a leisurely paced game, but back in the day players didn't screw around nearly as much between pitches and managers weren't making 3-4 pitching changes (including some mid-inning pitching changes) in every game. One only needs to look at average game lengths to see what I mean. Those attributes make the game move more slowly, and the former makes it appear the sport doesn't require much athleticism. In today's world, if you want to appeal to athletes, you need to have a sport that appears to require athleticism. Baseball, at least as it is played in the major leagues, doesn't do that.
About half of the defense is required to be athletic.....the other half, not so much. There's no reason the other eight guys on the field can't one day be held to the same standards as a speedy center fielder. For no reason whatsoever, major league baseball has allowed slow first basemen and aging left fielders with no arm to rob the game of its athleticism. This is done to preserve offense, which they think is what sells tickets. Action on both offense and defense would be better for everyone - coaches, fans, owners, advertisers, etc.
When you look through 20-30 year old baseball cards you see a lot of guys who wouldn't make the team in a backyard volleyball game. (Ahem, Bob Stanely.....) MLB sees flashes of athleticism now, but until all three outfielders have center fielder speed and every infielder has Pedroia-like scrappiness with Ripken-like size, the game will not keep the interest of today's youth.
Card collecting has suffered for a while now, IMO it started at the time of the 1994 MLB players strike. But years before there were just too damn many card companies out there. Until around 1980 or so you had Topps and then Donruss entered the scene. I haven't picked a Beckett magazine in a long time but the last time I looked there were a few dozen different types of baseball cards issued yearly. That's just crazy.
In that 1994 season I remember the stores that were able to stay in business as they were stocked with vintage baseball cards. And vintage football cards. And more importantly jerseys,t-shirts, ball caps,etc. In my area those type stores survived. If they were small shops with limited inventory selling newer baseball cards, well...
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