Will Big League Baseball Survive?

Globalization, the End of Television, Youth Sports, and the Future of Major League Baseball

By: Lincoln Mitchell

Narrated by: John N Gully

Length: 8 hrs and 12 mins

Publisher's summary

Major League Baseball is a beloved American institution that has been a product of the economic, social, and media structures that have evolved in the United States over the last century. In his shrewd analysis, Will Big League Baseball Survive?, Lincoln Mitchell asks whether the sport will continue in its current form as a huge, lucrative global business that offers a monopoly in North America - and whether those structures are sustainable.

Mitchell places baseball in the context of the larger, evolving American and global entertainment sector. He examines how both changes directly related to baseball - including youth sports and the increased globalization of the game - as well as broader societal trends such as developments in media consumption and celebrity culture will impact big league baseball over the next few decades.

His book ultimately proposes several possible scenarios for what big league baseball might look like. Will it become more global, smaller, or remain the same, or will it transform into some kind of hybrid of the three?

The book is published by Temple University Press.

©2017 Lincoln A. Mitchell (P)2017 Redwood Audiobooks

Critic reviews

"A book that all serious fans should read - and the league's commissioner, perhaps, most of all." (Sam Miller, co-author of The Only Rule Is It Has to Work: Our Wild Experiment Building a New Kind of Baseball Team)

"Mitchell lays out compelling scenarios for what MLB's future might hold...essential reading."(Rob Neyer, author of Rob Neyer's Big Book of Baseball Legends: The Truth, the Lies, and Everything Else)

Very interesting look at the Bigs!

I learned a lot throughout this read that I had not been previously aware of. Since my son will be playing college ball and is in the midst of the recruiting process, it has been eye opening. Excellent narration by John Gully!

Baseball and Beyond

If you like baseball you will probably enjoy this book because Mitchell talks the history of baseball, where it came from, where it is at and where it could potentially going.

Mitchell talks about how baseball has only taken off in places where soccer is not the number one sport, in Central America and Japan are the only places besides north America where baseball is popular. Mitchell discusses how the MLB took over and how many smaller baseball leagues have been put out of business. Mitchell talks about how baseball integrated baseball before the civil rights movement, and before schools were integrated. But by integrating early the MLB took all the stars from the Negro league which made the Negro league less entertaining without its stars. Another thing discussed is how as North American youth are playing less and less baseball, that we will have to look for our up and coming players from Central America and Japan. If we expand globally that would bring more players.

Baseball is also changing with technology and baseball. We now with everything have information right at our fingertips. We can follow our team, only watch our team, read blogs about our team, and know more about our team's top 20 prospects than we do about whole other organizations.

Mitchell loves baseball and wants to see it continue. But he has some ideas on how to make it more to make it more appealing globally. How a few teams in Central America, or Japan and how you could do extended road trips add more teams, which would open up more money for the MLB but would take some major restructuring.

My beloved game

Would you consider the audio edition of Will Big League Baseball Survive? to be better than the print version?

The beautiful game will always survive whether it be in the United States, North America or globally. I received this audiobook in exchange for an unbiased review. The whole book was very thoughtful and exhaustive research does give some insight into problems and is encouraging that baseball will after all, survive. If anything the big bucks will do MLB in but the game will survive.

Timely Question

There is no question that baseball will still be played in 20 years. The question is what will baseball look like at the highest level?

Will Big League Baseball Survive looks at that question by first looking at how we got to the game we have today and then by examining the problems, changes and other issues that Major League Baseball will have to deal with over the next few years. As the book points out, we might not have to wait too long to see which direction the game is headed as the next TV contract cycle is in 2021 and that will be pivotal.

I can't give the book 5 stars though because early in the text, it states at one point that the Atlanta Braves won the 1995 world series in 7 games when any self-respecting Braves fan like myself knows they won it in 6. It may just be one small error but when something like that happens, it does make one wonder what else might be wrong and even if absolutely nothing else is wrong the fact that you had to think of the question is troubling enough.

This was an easy book to listen to despite the fact it took me a few days to get through.

I received a free copy of this audiobook in exchange for an honest review and that had no baring on my opinion of the book.

Great analysis marred by poor narration

Mitchell's analysis is superb. But the narrator's performance was inadequate. He mispronounces words — not only baseball names such as "Bouton" and "Henrich", but also regular words such as "mores" (meaning "moral norms", correctly pronounced as "MOR-ayz") and "panoply". This provided an unwelcome distraction.