When I was growing up in the 1990s, there was a war between two sports: Soccer and Baseball—The Beautiful Game vs. America’s Past Time.

If you were from The States, soccer was labeled a sport for wimps. If you were from Europe, Baseball was not a real sport because the players stood around more than they moved.

Today, soccer is fast becoming one of the most popular sports in America, and baseball struggles to keep viewership up. Did soccer win the war? What is causing baseball to fall and soccer to rise? 

Here are my thoughts.

To be fair, soccer has not exactly skyrocketed to the top of the American sports chain, and baseball has not exactly fallen off, but there is truth to the rise of Soccer and the fall of Baseball. More kids are running around in Messi and Ronaldo shirts, US Soccer stars are finding success at the highest levels, and with the World Cup coming to the America’s, we could see the sport's already growing popularity surge.

Meanwhile, Baseball has been trying to find a way to get more viewership for years. Every season, there is news of a potential change in the sport. They recently changed the pitch clock and limited throwing to first (improvements, in my opinion). Making changes is nothing new, but the MLB makes it clear they do it because they are worried about losing more viewers.

In the sports card collecting world, the signs are clear. When I go to a card show, vendors tell me they wish they had brought more soccer cards because so many people asked for them. This year, The National had a trade night for soccer created by people within the community to deliver the demand that some are still ignoring. So why is soccer on the rise?

If I gave you all the reasons, this would be a dissertation, not a short essay. So, to keep it short and simple, it comes down to money. English soccer is at the forefront of the sport, and the owners of the English teams decided they wanted to start profiting off the game instead of owning teams for fun. Who better to look towards profiting off of the sport than the NFL? They took insight from the American league and figured out how to make their game reach a wider audience, ultimately resulting in more viewership and more TV rights. 

With more money came more pageantry, top players became superstars, and the bridge leading across the pond got bigger and bigger. Larger networks in the US now wanted to air the sport, and with that, people finally got to see that the game was a contact sport and that flopping did not exist in every game. David Beckham, FIFA, social media, and something new to get into also created this snowball that keeps rolling down the hill and doesn’t seem to be slowing down.

Baseball, on the other hand, was left unchanged up until recently. Many feel the changes for the sport are coming too late. New generations want something different. 

Let’s not bury Baseball entirely. As I said before, baseball is starting to make improvements. Speeding up the game will significantly help build more interest. People don’t have the time or the patience they once did (sad but true). Superstars are still on the rise. Ohtani is big for the sport, and Aaron Judge sets records every day (it seems like it). There is plenty to love about baseball, and I will not give it up, nor do I think we should.

Baseball still has a lot to offer, and that's why I don’t believe that soccer has won the war, but there also shouldn’t have been a war in the first place. Both sports are great in their own right and deserve to be celebrated, but if I were baseball, I would read the writing on the wall before its too late.