Baseball doesn’t need a halftime show. In fact, it doesn’t even have a halftime. And when you hear the national anthem, it’s supposed to be a clear transition from standing at attention to sitting back, relaxing, and letting the game happen.
Ah, baseball—the so-called “national pastime” that once captured America’s heart as reliably as fireworks on the Fourth of July. But in the year 2024, we’re at a crossroads, folks, and it’s one paved with social media influencers, pop stars, and glitzy, halftime-like spectacles.
If there’s anything sacred left in baseball, it’s getting hard to see past the smoke machines and stage lights. Somewhere, a bigwig at Major League Baseball HQ looked at America’s oldest sport and said, “You know what this could really use? A halftime show between the national anthem and the first pitch.”
This season, we’ve had Ice Cube spitting bars at Dodger Stadium, Fat Joe rapping at Yankee Stadium, and, if rumors are true, Taylor Swift gearing up to bring her legion of Swifties to the next World Series. Baseball used to be about “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” peanuts, Cracker Jack, and strategy you could chew on for nine innings. It never needed to pump itself up with all the bells and whistles. It had a simplicity and purity all its own, a kind of poetry in motion. Not anymore. It’s now a variety show where a little baseball happens to break out.
And here’s the kicker: if you’ve got a few decades of fandom under your belt, you’re in on the irony here. It’s not that baseball needs a pop star to swoop in and “save” it. No, it’s baseball itself that’s lost sight of the fact that it doesn’t need saving—it needs rediscovering. The heart and soul of the game aren’t hiding backstage with Ice Cube; they’re right there in the batter’s box and on the pitcher’s mound, just waiting for the spotlight.
But don’t get me wrong. I’m not complaining about the Dodgers taking home the World Series this year—hats off to them. And I’ll be thrilled when the Yankees do it next year, as they rightly should. I mean, I’m LA-based in the middle of writing books about Yankee legends and a Dodger hero, so it’s a win-win for me no matter which coast claims the glory. But watching baseball morph into a showbiz spectacle feels like watching your favorite uncle try to bust a move at a wedding. Sure, it’s fun to watch him try, but you kind of just want him to go sit down and be himself.
I don’t know who MLB thinks it’s going to hook with all this fanfare. The people in the stands at Dodger Stadium, Yankee Stadium, Wrigley, and Fenway? They’re not showing up for the half-time concert that nobody asked for. They’re there for the crack of the bat, the poetry of a 3-2 count, the strategy of a stolen base. But the suits upstairs think they can juice up attendance by turning every game into a one-stop pop extravaganza.
Here’s a little story: I’ve got two sons. Both of them grew up playing ball, loving it, learning it, and for a good stretch, neither one of them would miss a game if it was on TV. But these days? They barely even watch it anymore. And why would they? Baseball’s trying so hard to “reach the new generation” that it’s not even baseball anymore.
It’s some kind of Frankenstein mashup of hip-hop and highlight reels that you could watch on TikTok without ever learning what a double-play is. I can only imagine what Mark Twain would say if he sat through a “fan engagement event” that lasted longer than the actual game. My guess is he’d tip his hat, excuse himself, and mutter something about never getting that time back.
Twain would say, and rightly, that baseball’s gone and done a fool thing by selling itself short. I mean, can you picture him squinting through a pre-game pyrotechnic show? Or sitting there with a big, amused grin when they roll out Fat Joe to rap a few bars before the first pitch? He’d probably laugh, shake his head, and call it “circusry of the lowest order.”
And he’d be right! Baseball used to be timeless—something you passed down like an heirloom, a rite of passage. Now it’s treated like a shiny, new tech product that MLB’s PR folks think needs to go “viral.” Sorry, MLB, but the only “viral” this crowd wants is the joy of passing on the game to kids, not a reel of bloopers set to the latest hip-hop beat.
And that brings me to the fans—the real ones, the ones who show up in the third inning because traffic on the 405 or the BQE was murder, but they’re there. They know the history, they can recite stats from seasons long before they were born. They come for the quirks, the tradition, the smell of grass, the romance of the game. These fans don’t need Fat Joe or Ice Cube or even Taylor Swift to make a game worthwhile. They need a good, old-fashioned pitch duel, maybe an extra-inning nail-biter. They need the game as it was, not as some marketing exec thinks it should be.
And was it just coincidence — and I don’t believe in coincidences — that only two days after Fat Joe performed at Yankee Stadium, the legendary baseball play-by-play announcer Bob Costas announced his retirement?
So here’s my little wish list. Let’s get rid of the distractions, the celebrity cameos, the “entertainment” that MLB thinks will make baseball “cool” again. Trust me, it’s already cool. It was cool in the 1920s, the ’50s, the ’80s, and it’s still cool today, if you’d let it be itself. Want to bring fans in? Then bring in the history, the thrill of watching a rookie pitcher light up the mound, or a veteran shortstop dive to save a double in the ninth. Tell stories, not fairy tales. Make heroes out of the players, not out of the celebrity lineup.
And here’s a little advice to the MLB suits: You don’t grow baseball by grafting pop culture onto it. You grow it by preserving its quirks and its history, by teaching the next generation what makes it great, and by keeping the game alive in its simplest, truest form. If you build it, they will come. But if you jazz it up too much, don’t be surprised if they head for the exits.
Maybe baseball needs a reminder that its real charm is its heart, its integrity, and its sheer unpredictability. It’s not a pop concert, it’s a sport that’s got more personality in one foul ball than most PR gimmicks have in a whole season.
Let’s see a return to the baseball we all loved. If not, I might just have to dust off my mitt, throw some sunflower seeds in my back pocket, and find a little league game to watch. At least I know I won’t get caught in the middle of an unsolicited halftime show.
TONY CASTRO, the former award-winning Los Angeles columnist and author, is a writer-at-large and the national political writer for LAMonthly. org. He is the author of the forthcoming novel The Book of Marilyn. He can be reached at tony@tonycastro.com.
