The Face of Baseball

The world of competitive sports has seen many changes in the last 30 years. Looking back at sporting history, you can set different eras that represented different philosophies and ways of looking at the game. Up until mid 20^th century, all organized team sports were based on amateur players. This is a time when a lot relied on people’s willingness to play and to help manage the teams for the love of the game. Up until the 70’s/80’s came professionalization to almost every competitive sport, and what is the golden age of most sports, when professionals were still backed by a philosophy of love for the game and for specific teams/brands. Nowadays came the globalization of sports and with it come increasingly large numbers being tossed to teams and players. Teams are now managed entirely like companies and any respectable franchise is represented in the stock market. This has led to an increase of investment and base quality of the match, but many people miss the sheer love and passion for the game.

Few games have changed as much as baseball. The All-American national pastime is a big moneymaker, and that makes it a big target for rich companies. You can see how much money baseball moves around just by looking at gambling odds and statistics. To gamble on baseball is to be immersed in a world with many different faces and that is increasingly changing. If some franchises, like the Yankees, are stable, others come and go like the wind, and a successful gambler needs to keep an eye on everything that surrounds the sport as well as on the game.