Major League Baseball hosted a Field of Dreams game on August 12th that took place between the New York Yankees and the Chicago White Sox in Dyersville, Iowa, at the site of the 1989 baseball movie, Field of Dreams.
MLB has struggled to market its sport, however the Field of Dreams game that took place yielded extremely positive results. In fact, it was the most viewed baseball game since 2005 with 5,903,000 viewers.
Instead of trying to “speed up the game” or move the mound back they could continue to try and touch on the nostalgia aspect of baseball in addition to marketing the best players in baseball as a start. MLB has no shortage of young talent. Fernando Tatis, Vladimir Guerrero Jr., Juan Soto and of course, Shohei Ohtani who can do it all.
Just when you think MLB might have it figured out, they show you how disconnected they truly are when they decide to kick off the Baseball Hall of Fame ceremony at 1:30 in the afternoon on a Wednesday when no one can watch Derek Jeter, arguably one of the most best baseball players of all time, give his speech. Who thought this was a good idea?
I truly hope MLB took note of how well the Field of Dreams game was received so that they can continue to find ways to grow this game and the players can get the recognition that they deserve.
While it was a step in the right direction, there is more work to be done.
There will be another Field of Dreams game that will take place next year on August 11th, between the Chicago Cubs and the Cincinnati Reds. It will be interesting to see how the ratings are for this game, as these are two small market teams.
