Why Is Baseball So Popular?

The next idea they tried, that affected baseball as it is known today, was the night game. The Minor Leagues held their first night game in 1930, and attendance was up 2000%. When the Major Leagues finally followed suit, in 1935, attendance was up 117% (History.com Staff). Night games became more and more popular from there. One of the suggested reasons night games were so popular was that because people couldn’t afford to skip a day of work (Vorel). They could, however, afford to go to one after work, “men are not going to quit their tasks during the week to go to ball games, for their jobs are too precious and the time too short” (White 170). Another suggested reason for their popularity was the novelty of the night game. For many American baseball fans, it
The All-Star Game was the brainchild of Arch Ward, a sports editor. His idea was a baseball game played between the best players on the National League and the American League, where the fans got to vote for who was put on each team (Rymer). The idea was thought up to get sports fans to come to the World’s Fair in Chicago, 1933. They did even better than that though. Near 55,000 enthusiastic fans came to watch history be made by Babe Ruth. With a homerun swing, the American League won the first ever All-Star Game. The game was originally meant to be exclusive to 1933, but it was such a hit that there was no question; it was meant to become a tradition. The All-Star Game had the highest attendance of any baseball game, other than the World Series. “No single encounter in recent years, with the exception of a world’s series engagement, has stirred up more interest than the coming clash between the outstanding performers of the two major circuits,” (Rymer). It brought in large amounts of money and fans in 1933, and still does in the present. The All-Star Game had become the crown jewel of baseball in the