MLB: The Best of Baseball Player Spoofs and Sketches
By Manny Gómez
In recent years, MLB has encouraged teams to loosen up in an effort to liven the sport up a bit. Some teams have responded in ways we may have never expected.
Considering that MLB players are on average 27.6 years old, millennials have officially taken over the sport. Guys like Bryce Harper, who some consider the face of baseball, has even made it his priority to “Make Baseball Fun Again,” a take on Trump’s MAGA campaign slogan.
In a sport where sometimes old school rules take too much precedent, fans get a kick out of players being themselves. The best example of this came in 2004, when the self-proclaimed “idiots,” the Boston Red Sox, ended an 86-year World Series drought by simply – or seemingly – not caring.
Teams are taking the “loosen up” message to a whole new level now, and the sport is better for it. In fact, according to Maury Brown of Forbes, while attendance at big league stadiums was down in 2018, “all told, MLB saw ratings increase by 2%.” Some teams even saw ratings go up by up to 41%.
Sure, increase in viewership can’t all be attributed to teams loosening the reigns a bit. The fact that the teams that saw the biggest ratings boost had winning seasons indicates that winning plays a role in viewership as well.
A little comedy never hurt anybody, though, and in honor of “making baseball fun again,” I have compiled a brief list of ballplayers being funny.
Hope you enjoy!