Wrigley Field should not look this empty on a highlight clip. Not when independent baseball YouTubers are proving every day that there is still a real audience for the game.
The passion is still here. The question is whether MLB knows what to do with it.
I have been thinking about this since last fall, when I read about Jane Leavy’s idea for fixing part of what is wrong with baseball: let kids in free.
Leavy’s proposal is 10 and under. I’d push it to 12 and under, but I am not going to split hairs over the age line when the bigger point is sitting right there in front of us. Fill those seats. Create the memory. Give the game a chance to matter to somebody new.
This is not a review of Jane Leavy’s Make Me Commissioner: I Know What’s Wrong with Baseball and How to Fix It.
This is me, a baseball fan since the late 1970s, looking at too many empty seats on too many screens and thinking: what are we doing?
Yes, it is April. Yes, it is cold in Chicago, New York, Baltimore, and other places where baseball can feel more like a weather endurance test than a family outing. But that is exactly why MLB and individual teams should be more aggressive, not less. When I watch Cubs home games and those 15-minute recaps, I see sections that should not be that empty. I have seen it with the Mets. I have seen it with the Nationals. I have seen it with the Orioles. Great baseball towns. Great baseball history. Empty seats anyway.
And every empty seat is a missed chance.
Not just missed ticket revenue. Missed memory. Missed habit. Missed connection.
That is why I keep coming back to Leavy’s point. Stop treating access like some impossible luxury. Let kids in free with a paying adult. Make it easy. Make it normal. Make it something families can build around instead of budgeting like they are planning a minor vacation.
And before somebody says, “People will abuse it,” let me save us all some time. There is a little fraud in every industry.
That is not a serious excuse for doing nothing.
We manage student discounts. We manage senior discounts. We manage promotions, ticket scans, memberships, group nights, and dynamic pricing schemes that change like airline fares. MLB can figure out whether a kid looks 12 or under. And if a few slip through? Fine. I would rather live with a little imperfection than keep perfecting the art of pricing families out of the ballpark.
Because here is the bigger issue: baseball still acts like it has endless time.
It does not.
April 1, 2026 in Anaheim, and look at those stands. Savannah Bananas, the new Indianapolis Clowns, a crowd full of energy, and a format that is only about 10 years old drawing this kind of response.
Meanwhile, the Chicago Cubs are celebrating 150 years of history. Think about that. Let that sink in.
Baseball’s rich history still matters. Storylines still matter. Joy still matters. The question is whether Major League Baseball is doing enough to turn that history into something fresh, fun, and full enough to keep the seats packed.
Banana Ball is not traditional baseball, and I am not saying MLB should copy it. But you would have to be asleep not to notice what it has tapped into. It understands that sports is not just competition. It is experience. It is pace. It is fun. It is story. It is the feeling that something might happen at any moment and you want to be there when it does.
Baseball, at its best, already has that.
It does not need to become a circus.
It needs to remember its own magic.
For me, some of that magic began with baseball cards. For many of us, cards were the gateway drug. Topps. Fleer. Donruss. The smell of gum, the stats on the back, the arguments with your friends, the dream that your favorite player’s card might become treasure.
Then the card companies overprinted the life out of some of that wonder, and a generation learned that even nostalgia can be mass-produced into mush.
But the impulse behind it was real: collect the players, learn the game, care about the stories.
That still matters.
So does the game within the game.
Some of my favorite baseball memories are not even the loud moments. They are the explaining moments. Sitting with a girlfriend and hearing somebody like Steve Stone break down pitch sequencing. Listening to Tom Seaver explain why a count mattered, why a pitcher was setting a hitter up, why a fastball in one inning could matter three innings later. Watching a game with my Godchildren and seeing that look when something clicks — not just who won, but why the moment mattered.
That is baseball’s secret weapon.
Not just home runs. Not just velocity. Not just gambling apps and graphics and probability models sprayed across the screen.
Baseball can teach attention.
It can teach patience.
It can teach strategy.
It can teach that there is a game within the game, and then another game inside that one.
That is why it frustrates me that so much of MLB leadership has felt uninspiring for so long. I have followed this sport for decades, and very few people in suits around the game have made me feel like they truly understand how fans fall in love with it in the first place.
Da Cubs are doing something smart by bringing Anthony Rizzo back as an ambassador. I love that. That feels human. That feels memory-driven. That feels like somebody understands baseball is not only a business. It is relationship, nostalgia, and identity.
That makes me ask: what is your team doing? What is MLB doing to change things up? Why not take some of the money they spend in a hundred other directions and put more of it into making the game easier to enter, easier to love, and easier to come back to?
Why did the Cubs become such a national brand?
Yes, WGN mattered. Of course it did.
But signals alone do not create affection. People do.
Harry Caray did.
Steve Stone did.
The weirdness did.
The laughter did.
The sense that you never quite knew what might happen on the mic or on the field did.
That was entertainment without cheapening the game.
That was personality.
That was invitation.
MLB has had years to lead, and too often it has felt 5 to 10 years behind where culture is moving. I felt some of that myself back in the early streaming days when I bought the MLB package and thought, this is what we are doing?
It was clunky. It was frustrating. It felt like baseball had the right idea and then handed it to the wrong people to execute. That may sound harsh, but if you were there in those early years, you probably know exactly what I mean.
Meanwhile, the sport itself keeps proving it can still move people when it is packaged like an event worth showing up for. Look at the World Baseball Classic. Look at the energy. Look at the crowds. Look at the pride. Baseball is not short on global appeal. It is not short on great stories. It is not short on emotion. It is too often short on imagination from the people supposed to be leading it.
And yes, part of the answer is joy.
Not fake joy. Not forced fun.
Real joy.
Tell more stories. Lean into the international reach of the game. Do a better job explaining why the World Baseball Classic matters. Bring more humor into the coverage. Let fans see players being human. Give me more moments like Jennie Finch facing elite hitters. Give me more Greg Maddux stories, including the kind of prank only Maddux could pull off. Give me more baseball as something alive, surprising, and worth talking about.
Because baseball is not only statistics and labor disputes and luxury boxes.
It is humor.
It is deception.
It is timing.
It is nerves.
It is grace.
It is failure, recovery, and ridiculous stories you tell for 40 years.
If you fill the stands with kids, you are not just papering over empty seats.
You are planting return visits.
You are creating future fans.
You are giving a child a first foul ball, a first hot dog, a first great photo from the stands, a first short video of the crowd coming alive, a first moment they want to save on a phone and show somebody later. You are giving them that first walk into a stadium that feels bigger than anything they have ever seen.
And no, I do not even think every kid under 12 needs their own phone. Borrow a parent’s phone. Take a few pictures. Capture the crowd. Catch the skyline. Zoom in on the pitcher from the upper deck and laugh because the photo came out blurry. That is part of how kids experience events, save moments, and share what mattered to them.
You are giving baseball a future that no marketing slogan can buy on its own.
So yes, Jane Leavy says 10 and under. I say 12 and under.
Either way, baseball should stop overthinking this and start opening the gates.
Because the sport does not only need better rules, better pace, or better technology.
It needs better leadership
Leadership bold enough to say this game belongs to the next generation too.
Leadership bold enough to understand that a kid in a seat today may become a season ticket holder later, a Little League coach, or the teenager who falls in love with baseball through phone videos, instant replays, pitch tunneling, scoreboard stats, old radio voices, the rich history of the Negro Leagues, and the game’s strange little rituals and superstitions — don’t step on the foul line, rally caps, lucky jerseys, and all.
And yes, I know somebody will say free tickets do not fix everything.
Of course they do not.
But some ideas do not need to fix everything to be worth doing.
Some ideas need to open a door.
This is one of them.
If Major League Baseball wants to grow beyond Gen X nostalgia and Baby Boomer memory, it has to stop assuming the next generation will just show up because the game has always been there. That is not how culture works anymore. You have to invite people in. You have to make the experience worth their time. You have to understand that today’s kid may meet baseball first through a YouTube clip, a team short, a group text, a fantasy app, a parent’s phone camera, or a quick recap before they ever sit in the ballpark.
So let them in.
Fill the empty seats.
Take the long view.
Make the memory first.
The rest has a better chance of following.
What do you think? Should MLB let kids in free, at least with a paying adult? And if your team tried one bold idea to bring in more young fans, what should it be?
You’re still here? You made it to the end. Thank you for spending a little time here. I appreciate it.
Northern Illinois roots. Finger Lakes perspective. Cubs bias fully intact.
I write about baseball, history, mobility, public policy, AI, personal stories, and the beautiful mess of being human. My mind bounces between Pete Rose, politics, Taylor Swift, transportation, memory, mistakes, and whatever else helps me make sense of the world.
Writing helps me slow that down.
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Postscript: I was just about to publish this when a TikTok from a creator named Digg popped into my feed. He was frustrated trying to find a game to watch on YouTube, and it led him to talk about WGN and that old feeling of being able to find a Cubs game almost by accident, even from Southern Indiana. That told me this piece was hitting something real.
Unofficial Footnote: The first baseball card I truly fell in love with was the 1981 Fleer Rickey Henderson.
Cubs Fun Fact: The Chicago Cubs were not always called the Cubs. Before that, the franchise was known as the White Stockings, Colts, and Orphans — and newspapers tossed around even more colorful names along the way. I already have a full draft brewing on how I learned that by digging through old newspapers from the late 1800s. More on that later this year.
Thank you @Scotty Rude !
Such an awesome read Gary! I remember growing up in the 90s especially during the strike of 1994 and how much baseball cards meant to me. Movies like Rookie of the Year and Angels in the Outfield were amazing! Somewhere in between the 162 games though of a season... I think lost interest in comparison to 4 months worth of football and then one big game. I love what the Savannah Bananas 🍌 are doing to increase excitement in baseball and give alternatives as well for fans players too.