Question posed by Judge Landis

[byrone]

Reading sportswriter Fred Lieb’s book “Baseball as I Have Known It”, Lieb describes this scene:

“After the last game of the 1924 Washington-New York World Series, I was alone with (Judge) Landis on a little balcony outside his room in the Raleigh Hotel in Washington. Below us in Pennsylvania Avenue snake-danced a joy-maddened crowd. Washington’s beloved Senators had just won the deciding seventh game, and Saint Walter Johnson had been the winning pitcher in the twelve-inning cliff-hanger. It was not only Washington’s first World Series victory but also its first major league pennant. Congressmen, department heads, barbers, bootblacks, janitors, office secretaries all joined in on the frivolity. They blew trumpets and beat drums. Some beat wash basins with large spoons. Anything that could make noise was being used in this joyous paean to victory.

Landis put his hand on my shoulder and looked directly in my eyes as he said ‘Freddy, what are we looking at now- could this be the highest point of what we call our national sport? Greece had its sports and its Olympics; they must have reached a zenith and then waned. The same for the sport of ancient Rome, there must have been a year at which they were at their peak. I repeat Freddy, are we at the zenith of baseball’.’”

So in 1924 a century ago Landis was questioning if baseball was at its peak.

Looking back, what is the zenith of baseball?

[Hankphenom]

3173.

[packs]

For all the wrong reasons 1998 was probably the zenith of the modern game. I can't think of another time in modern media where baseball was featured so heavily again across every medium and was so widely talked about by everyone.

[rats60]

1978 was baseball's peak. It has been in decline ever since, replaced by the NFL as our country's sport of choice.

[Brent G.]

Originally Posted by packs

For all the wrong reasons 1998 was probably the zenith of the modern game. I can't think of another time in modern media where baseball was featured so heavily again across every medium and was so widely talked about by everyone.

I don't see any way that's duplicated again, in any sport.

Might've also been the peak for forged autos -- The Chase and Michael Jordan's last championship run. The forgers were BUSY.

[mortimer brewster]

Early 1960's.

The NFL championship game of 1958 showed how exciting football could be on the medium of television. The popularity of the sport exploded.

[Hankphenom]

What other sport could sustain interest over 200+ games a year? Answer: not a one. The others are great, but the Babe said it best in his farewell: "The only real game, I think, is baseball." I have no idea what he meant by that, but hey, it's the Babe!

[Cubanball]

When I first read this question the first thing that came to mind was the decade of the 1970s. But baseball likes metrics so I looked up some numbers. I looked at year by year World Series viewership and this is what I found. The highest average Series game viewership for any year 1968 to 2024 was in 1978. The 1978 World Series had 44.279 million viewers, the highest ever. Compare this to 1998 with 20.34 million viewers or the lowest all-time in 2023 with 9 million viewers. So yes according to this baseball peaked in 1978.

[doug.goodman]

Average MLB game attendance peaked in 2007

[Chris-Counts]

I believe baseball's greatest era came in 1945-49. There was never a time where baseball was more popular than during the waning days of WWII, and during the next few years. Attendance starts going crazy in late 1945. The war had just ended, and soldiers were coming home in large numbers. Night games were suddenly the rage. MLB attendance in 1945 hit 10 million for the first time, and doubled to 20 million in three years. Baseball Reference lists 70 different professional leagues that operated in 1947 — compare that to today. There was minor league baseball in literally hundreds of cities and towns across the country. In 1950, TV comes out, and it's another 12 years before MLB has 20 million fans, and expansion is needed to make it happen. Also, Cuban baseball and women's baseball thrived like never before or since. On a relative level, baseball's true Golden Age happens right after WWII — there was never a time when a greater percentage of the population was fixated on the game.

Since ever thread needs a photo ...

[Econteachert205]

1955. Not a dodgers fan but the local caring/ local players/ loyalty began to decline after the west coast expansion.

[BioCRN]

The game peaked in 1874.

After that, the weak new younger players started using gloves.

What's next? No more outs in foul ground on one bounce? Well, of course.

I don't even recognize the game after that era. I wouldn't mind going back and taking a train into the city to see my favorite players before they died of tuberculosis in their mid-30s.

[mortimer brewster]

When Roger Maris broke the single season home run record in 1961 there were 23,000 fans in attendance in a stadium that holds 67,000. It was a Sunday afternoon. Fans were probably more interested in watching NFL (and AFL) football on TV. The day before only 19,000 fans showed up. Big college football day.

[doug.goodman]

THAT is a spectacular photo Chris!

[jingram058]

Money corrupts everything. MLB baseball is, like every other business, all about and only about money. Pick any iconic moment in baseball history before money ruined it. It almost all came crashing down way back in 1919 with The Black Sox and fixing the World Series, but Babe Ruth came along and single-handedly saved the game. So no, I disagree with Judge Landis with the Senators winning in 1924 as the apex.

[Hankphenom]

Are we making a distinction, and what's it looking like in other continents?

[Casey2296]

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I would say 1907-1929. And a card.
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[JollyElm]

Shout out to the 1969 Miracle Mets!!

National League baseball in New York finally came home for good.

[darwinbulldog]

I suppose if it ever becomes popular in one of the larger countries, we haven't hit peak popularity yet. Barring that I guess it was back in the 1990s. It looks like that's when Litle League participation peaked, and it was also close to its current level of international (S. America, Caribbean, and East Asian) popularity by then. I suppose 1998 is correct.

[Hankphenom]

Not Bill Maher's, but MLB's. I predict that whatever decline baseball has experienced lately in its enormous attendance--25,000-30,000 per contest in a 162-game season followed by packed stadiums for a month of playoffs; what other sport comes even close to that level of interest?--will soon be reversed with the clock and other efforts to make the game watchable again. They have changed everything for me, I'll tell you. The rumors of this great game's imminent demise are decidedly premature, I think.

[jingram058]

I don't watch the game today. But I wish I had watched last night's Mariners - Yankees game. The Yankees, no hit through 7 innings, come back and win? That's crazy!