By: Abigail Sun
The National Basketball Association’s (NBA) Playoff Games are arguably the most viewed and popular sporting events of the year alongside the Super Bowl. Baseball has long been considered America’s national pastime sport, but the new generation is tired of slow, two hour long games. Basketball games can also be very long, but the game itself is fast paced. With superstar athletes like LeBron James and Stephen Curry breaking records seemingly every other day, basketball is clearly taking over as America’s favorite sport.
Generation Z, those born between 1995 and 2012, physically cannot sit through a lackluster, two hour baseball game. With the short attention span of a meager eight seconds as calculated by Sparks & Honey, an organization that researches emerging cultural waves, it is no surprise that teenagers tend to become fidgety watching a baseball be thrown around the field with seemingly no purpose. Occasionally, there will be a spurt of action like a home run, but usually, there is a lot of waiting around as the next batter walks up to the plate, players walking from outfield to infield and back again, winding up for the pitch, teams resetting after a foul ball, et cetera. Furthermore, the wide playing field requires viewers to have immense concentration at all times in order to split their attention between watching outfield and the bases. Players are too spread out for the viewer to be catching all the action and therefore forces replays if you are watching on the television. Some may argue that this argument is not valid as audiences’ eyes should really only follow the ball, but in order to really watch and absorb what happens in a game, you must be paying attention to everything that is happening as one play often affects another. Basketball, on the other hand, is fast paced and the court is relatively small as compared with a baseball field, so it is a lot easier to keep up with the action. The ostentatious moves and tricks basketball players pull off against their opponents also make the sport appealing for all audiences despite the game being around two hours long as well (including timeouts and other breaks in play), especially to young, aspiring players who eagerly try to mimic their moves.
At Mills, the dichotomy between the popularity of baseball and basketball is very evident; the number of attendees to a basketball match even rivals football. The gym is packed with students, parents and faculty members to cheer on the Vikings, especially during Home Quads against Burlingame, Capuchino, and Aragon High Schools. The game is popular at Mills because of how talented our teams are and the “hype” it receives. When your favorite high school player can pull out a move that even a NBA player cannot or an athlete clinches a victory in the final few seconds on the game, phones are whipped out at lightning speed to record the moment and hours later, it has spread rapidly through the use of social media. In addition to the talented athletes, Mills unveils two more crowd-pleasing teams to entice a large audience: high-spirited cheerleaders and the harmonic Pep Band. Though Mills Varsity Baseball is just as athletically talented, the game itself simply does not appeal to high-school students.
Basketball is enticing to all generations and is a sport that is very easy to understand. Superstar athletes and flamboyant tricks make the game exciting and fun to watch. Make way baseball, basketball is coming through as America’s newest pastime sport!
