Over the last couple months Alex Rodriguez has been a busy man. Rodriguez was suspended from MLB action for 211 games for use of performance enhancing drugs, only to get that suspension reduced to 162 games.
That wasn’t enough for Rodriguez though, as he is now suing Major League Baseball, causing veritable warfare between Major League Baseball and the player’s union.
This may be one of the biggest stories of the last 10 years involving drug abuse in sports, but here’s the thing: sport’s fans don’t care. No one cares.
To the credit of Major League Baseball’s media department, this story has been buried so far beneath NFL playoff coverage that it is irrelevant. While this tactic is cowardly at its core, it makes sense.
Sport’s fans across the U.S. have been chomping at the bit to give their opinion on Richard Sherman screaming into a camera; meanwhile one of the biggest legal battles in the history of America’s pastime is taking place right under their nose.
While this is undoubtedly in part because of the timing of Rodriguez’s suit, it is also a sign of the times.
Americans are no longer surprised by a headline about a crooked baseball player.
Americans don’t care about baseball, especially not during football season.
Rodriguez could be walking down the streets of New York City handing steroids to children, and it would still not generate the same amount of coverage that Sherman’s post-game interview has.
The American people are now so disinterested with baseball that even its greatest scandals fail to illicit a response.
This may have happened for a number of reasons. Fans may have gotten fed-up and disenchanted by the amount of steroid use marring the game around the turn of the century. Fans may have decided that constant talks of MLB lock-outs meant that the sport was not worth paying attention to.
Fans may have just gotten bored.
It’s been argued that the modern sports fan does not posses the attention span for a sport as subtle and deliberate as baseball, and this may be true.
Either way, baseball has firmly cemented its place in the back of sports fan’s minds, and the reaction to the coverage of Rodriguez is only further proof of this.
The saddest part is that the heads of Major League Baseball seem to have accepted their role. They strive to hide headlines in the off-season and wait until the season starts to seek publicity when they are the only major sport around.
They know that it won’t be much longer before they are marketing baseball as “traditional summer fun” instead of as America’s greatest medium of sport.
