Bill lee ken burns baseball

A former Boston Red Sox pitcher, an academic and two journalists last night discussed "why baseball, in the public mind, has sunk so deeply. Twenty-three people gathered at the Institute of Politics to hear Bill "Spaceman" Lee, a left-handed pitcher who was a star on the Red Sox' World Series team; David King, assistant professor of public policy at the Kennedy School of Government; Don Skwar, columnist at the Boston Globe; and Larry Tye, a Boston Globe reporter, reflect on why fewer Americans are identifying baseball as their favorite sport. Citing an ABC News poll stating that only 28 percent of Americans identify baseball as their favorite sport, Tye said baseball has not been so unpopular since In football, you only have to see it once a week and then you can drink your 12 Budweisers and go back to work on Monday--baseball you have to digest. King attributed part of the sport's decline to the decline of family values in the United States. Lee, who wore a red cap emblazoned with the letters "CCCP" during the recent Ken Burns' "Baseball" series on PBS, said materialism and commercials have corrupted the game, naming Adam Smith, the father of market economics, as the culprit. Although players' salaries have tended to rise, King said "baseball [as an industry] has done an especially bad job at finding its niche in the international market.