Baseball No Longer Rules October

If you hadn't noticed before now, it's time you do: after more than century of dominance in the American sporting marketplace, baseball is no longer king.

I hate to say this right before the World Series, but think about it. Baseball was once the ultimate American sport. Ty Cobb. Babe Ruth. Mickey Mantle. Jackie Robinson. Hank Aaron. Ted Williams. Willie Mays. If you held a fantasy draft of historical stars from any sport, baseball would dominate.

But something crazy happened last week. On Monday, October 18, a horrible Week 6 football game between Tennessee Titans and Jacksonville Jaguars trounced the ratings for a riveting Game 3 of the ALCS between the Texas Rangers and New York Yankees.

What made this development so shocking isn't just playoffs vs. regular season, but the fact baseball had so many advantages:

1. Better markets in Dallas and New York vs. Jacksonville and Nashville.

2. It was Game 3 of the ALCS, putting the most dominant franchise in baseball history against a team in the Rangers trying to make their first World Series ever against a regular season football game between two NFL teams who have little chance of making the Super Bowl.

3. For most of the football game, Kerry Collins and Trent Edwards were the participating quarterbacks. Meanwhile, the baseball game featured a dominant starting pitching match-up between Cliff Lee (most dominant active postseason pitcher) and Andy Pettitte (most post-season wins and IP of any pitcher ever).

4. It was the YANKEES, for Christ's sake!

Honestly, when baseball can't win that battle, it's time to admit they're now a clear second fiddle on the American sports landscape. It's not quite as bad as being the thoroughly unlikeable NBA or only-way-you-like-it-is-if-you-grew-up-with-it NHL, but still. The king has fallen, and his replacement plays on Sundays.

Some of the issue for baseball is just inherent to the game. Baseball is slower and more methodical, while football is more sudden and violent. In the American culture where conflict is at the core of our entertainment, football is right on message.

But it's not just the difference in the games that has caused baseball to fall behind. There have been a series of self-inflicted wounds by a baseball culture that is too focused on "purity" and "history" to adjust to a changing marketplace. Why is there no instant replay? Because they didn't have one 50 years ago. You know what else they didn't have 50 years ago? HD cameras that make instant replay quick and easy.

And this is nothing new. Jackie Robinson broke the baseball color barrier in 1947. The history of blacks in the NFL dates back to the 1920s. Think about all the hullabaloo when baseball changed to the division structure and added a wild card. You would have thought Bud Selig was using the bible as toilet paper the way some elitists (Bob Costas) reacted.

One of the great things about baseball, its tradition, has become an albatross around its neck. The lack of replay is certainly the most prominent of the progress vs. tradition debates, but there are many more. The length of games could be greatly curtailed if baseball enforced a pitch clock and eliminated the ability of batters to step out of the box if the pitcher takes a few extra seconds on the mounds. Watch enough games and you'll see full minutes go by without a pitch being thrown. That's just not going to cut it in today's sporting marketplace.

Another major issue for baseball is the branding of its players. One of the greatest marketing tools the NFL and NBA have is the NCAA. By eliminating the gap between college athletics and the pros, the best rookies each year already have a built-in following before their first NFL training camp. That's why the NFL draft is such a big deal. We know these guys and we want them (or don't want them) on our teams.

With baseball, the exact opposite is true. You've got college baseball, high school baseball, and an influx of international talent. And not only do we not know who most of these guys are, but we also know teams aren't just picking the best players. It's about signability. Can you imagine a football agent wielding the same kind of power over the NFL draft that Scott Boras does over the MLB draft? The lack of a hard slotting system in baseball is a huge problem.

Once these players get into the system, they're still a million miles from the consciousness of the Big League fans. I'm a Cardinals fan and I couldn't tell you the first thing about the roster for the Class A Quad City River Bandits last year. In pure marketing terms, baseball does a horrible job of branding its next generation of stars, which decreases the level of emotional attachment with fans. The fact 48 percent of minor league players under contract were born outside of the United States doesn't help much either (per 2010 Racial and Gender Report Card put out by the University of Central Florida College of Business Administration).

Speaking of the racial make-up of baseball, the lack of African-American stars is killing baseball. According to the same 2010 Racial and Gender Report Card, African-Americans make up just 9 percent of the game, compared to 60 percent white and 28 percent international. There are no black owners. There were no black CEOs or Presidents in 2009 and in 2010. There are only three black GMs and two managers (Ron Washington and Dusty Baker). Of the 26 currently employed managers, 21 are white (and 17 of the 21 are over age 50).

In 2010 America, you cannot lay claim to being the national pastime when your ranks are woefully unrepresentative of a major demographic of the country. You cannot lay claim to be the national pastime when you refuse to use technology to fix your mistakes (or have two leagues playing by different rules, for that matter). And you cannot lay claim to being the national pastime when your draft is an auction of 17-year-olds with an ego the size of Texas (Bryce Harper).

And so it shall come to pass that next Sunday, Game 4 of the World Series, it will lose in the rankings to the NFL game between the Pittsburgh Steelers and New Orleans Saints. And if there's a Game 5 on Monday, it will lose to Colts/Texans.

And if Bud Selig ever wants to reclaim the top step on the American sports hierarchy, he's going to have to reinvent a sport that has steadfastly refused to adapt to its changing audience.