MLB offers a welcome diversion to the storm-weary and a lesson about immigration | Opinion

At a time when storm-weary Americans badly needed a diversion from worries ranging from escalating foreign wars to toxic domestic politics, Major League Baseball has stepped up to the plate with attendance and TV ratings surging.

The second round of the playoffs got underway this week featuring three of MLB’s marquee franchises — the Yankees, Mets and Dodgers. Oh, and the Cleveland Guardians are also there because, well, the Yankees needed an opponent.

In a sense this represents a bit of a comeback for the sport. As many of Florida’s numerous senior citizens can attest, there was a time when baseball was not a mere diversion each October but, instead, bordered on a national obsession as the long hot summer’s pennant races culminated in the World Series.

Then, sometime within the lifetime of those seniors, baseball lost its claim to being “America’s national pastime.” Disparaged as too slow, it was upstaged by pro football nationwide and arguably by college football and pro basketball in many parts of the country, including Florida.

This year, however, baseball made progress toward recapturing sports fans’ attention, as MLB reported with pride in the gains in attendance and TV ratings, gains attributed to rules changes that sped up the games.

Granted, Florida is a bit of an outlier when it comes to baseball. The Tampa Bay Rays, whose home field in St. Petersburg was severely damaged by Hurricane Milton, ranked 28 ^th in attendance among MLB’s 30 teams.

The Miami Marlins ranked 29th, and only the woebegone Athletics, playing out their final season in Oakland before following the Raiders to Las Vegas, saved the Marlins’ average attendance of 13,425 per game from ranking dead last.

In fact, the only bright spot for Florida baseball may have occurred on August 25 ^th when a team from Lake Mary defeated a team from Taiwan to win the Little League World Series.

Meanwhile, the closest the Marlins came to piquing area fans’ interest occurred on Sept. 19 when the visiting Dodgers’ superstar Shohei Ohtani was on the verge of setting a record by topping 50 home runs and 50 stolen bases in a single season. Against the Marlins, naturally, he easily did both.

Showcasing stars such as Ohtani and the Yankees’ Aaron Judge has helped boost interest in baseball, much as the golf benefited from Tiger Woods’ success and the NBA grew by spotlighting stars such as Michael Jordan and LeBron James.

Spotlighting star players will continue to be important as baseball contends with other sports emerging to compete for the fans’ interest and the media’s attention. Among them is soccer, whose preeminent star, Lionel Messi, plays for Miami.

Some devotees of soccer, truly a worldwide sport, have enjoyed needling baseball fans by ridiculing their use of the word “World” in connection with the sport’s championship competition, the World Series, as an example of American hubris.

Years ago this may have been a valid criticism because foreign players were something of a novelty. For instance, 50 years ago, when Saturday Night Live debuted, the show’s first Black cast member, Garrett Morris, repeatedly portrayed a character named Chico Escuela, a fictitious Dominican player whose only utterance was “ Beisbol been berry berry good to me.”

This year, however, 264 (27.8%) of the players on MLB’s opening-day rosters were born outside of the United States. They represented 19 different countries.

Moreover, as Hispanic Heritage Month drew to a close on Tuesday, it was worth noting that most of those players were Latinos. The Dominican Republic led with 108 players followed by Venezuela (58), Cuba (18) and Puerto Rico (17).

At a time when demagogues’ lies about migrants are a constant presence in our nation’s toxic political landscape, the international players’ success in this quintessentially American game offers an object lesson in the benefits that legal immigrants can bring. Let’s hope the voters notice.

Robert F. Sanchez, of Tallahassee, is a former member of the Miami Herald Editorial Board. He writes for the Herald’s conservative opinion newsletter, Right to the Point. It’s weekly, and it’s free. To subscribe, go to miamiherald.com/righttothepoint.