[dgs_sgd]

Until recently I had only ever been to one baseball game.. saw the Jays when I was 10. I remember falling asleep at the game because it was so slow and boring, and never really watched baseball after that.

But in the last couple years I’ve seen the Mets and Phillies multiple times, and it’s now one of my favourite sports to watch thanks to the pitch clock increasing the pace of the game. I’d be really curious to see data on how many new fans the league got after the change.

[jfengel]

It's too soon to tell. Here's total attendance data:

https://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/majors/misc.shtml

COVID did such a number on attendance that it's hard to separate anything else out. It has been increasing since it bottomed out but is still below the peak.

The best I can say: it was falling before the pandemic and it's now above where it was even before everything shut down. So... maybe?

[toast0]

> I remember falling asleep at the game because it was so slow and boring, and never really watched baseball after that.

If you listen to people talking about how they loved going to the game with their family, it's usually about what they did to pass the time during the boredom. It was America's pastime, because you needed to figure out how to pass time during the boredom.

The pitch clock is nice though, gives a rythym to action.

That said, minor league baseball is a lot more fun to watch because there's a lot more variance, and they have a lot of stuff going on between the innings to keep you awake ;)

[relwin]

This is why the Savannah Bananas (and the banana league) are so popular. Banana-ball draws sellout crowds wherever they play. The main focus is "don't be boring."