My concerns about the future of baseball—a $10 billion sport enjoying an unprecedented era of financial success and labor peace—are not based on misplaced nostalgia for a “pure” game that never existed. They are based on the dissonance between a game that demands and depends on concentration, time, and memory and a twenty-first-century culture that routinely disrupts all three with its vast menu of digital distractions.

(cf. Jacoby, Susan. Why Baseball Matters (Why X Matters Series) . Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.)

This quote by author Susan Jacoby in her book Why Baseball Matters is about baseball. But it applies well to many things today. We live in a world of distractions after all. So many things breathlessly clamoring for our attention.

For those of us over a certain age, the art of paying attention (and hence watching baseball) is admittedly a more natural thing. We did not grow up with cellphones, the 24 news cycle, and TikTok. We grew up with a morning (or afternoon) newspaper, three TV channels, and one Game of the Week. We followed baseball through box scores, watching This Week in Baseball, and through “long articles” in magazines like Sports Illustrated.

Games and sports are something beautiful and frivolous. At the same time they are important things for us to care about and to find inspiration from. In that way most games and most “play” (especially baseball) is like prayer or meditation. And like prayer and meditation it is something that requires work.

Baseball requires a lot of attention. That according to Jacoby is both why baseball matters and why it has an uphill challenge trying to connect to new generations of fans.

Those who own the game and play the game on the field must now face up to the tough job of thinking long-term in a society captivated by technologies that reward short-term thinking.

(cf. Jacoby, Susan. Why Baseball Matters (Why X Matters Series) (p. 36). Yale University Press. Kindle Edition.)

Since most things that truly matter– baseball, books, poetry, kindness, and love– require attention, baseball has the same basic problem as our larger society has. How do we teach patience and attention in a world that rewards and encourages impatience and distraction?

Jacoby ends her book with a few half-hearted (to me) suggestions for baseball, none of which is very convincing. She does not even try to come up with suggestions for our wider society.

I wish I had some for our wider society. But it is always easier to see problems than solutions. I suspect though that any solution would include: books, art, poetry, education, kindness, and love. And, of course, baseball.