The violence in pro sports is there to sell tickets. It has leaked down into lower levels because of the publicity of selling it and the emulation of kids for their “heroes.” It is part of the sales.
Look at boxing...the more the knockouts the better the fighter. Ice skating...more revolutions and less technical skill, even though they bust the ice often, is the winner whether they skate well or not.
And in the background are the announcers pounding second level skills into stardom. It is the money, not the game.
Major league baseball is the perfect example of mediocrity. To determine the best hitters, we have to figure that there’s about 1,000 players with current major league contracts. Of those players with enough games to qualify, playing only three quarters of the season at 120 games, only 19 players hit .300 according to the Autonomy Corporation, a research company. That’s having success one third of the time. But the sport generated $10.3 billion in 2018, the last time Forbes finalized a count. So it isn’t the sport for the true sport of it, it’s the money. And it’s at all levels now.
rwood
Baseball is a strange situation, isn’t it? As you point out, the best hitters have batting averages indicating they get a hit over 30% of the time. But that means they fail almost 70% of the time.
I wonder how that contrasts with other sports. Do the best basketball players make a basket only 30% of the time? I don’t know the answer to that, but it’s an interesting point.