“Over the decades I’ve watched baseball just disappear from the radar in discussions, as older white Americans attrited out of the workforce; younger Americans regard it as almost as foreign as soccer now.”
I agree. Growing up we were football crazy in the fall and baseball crazy in the spring.
I remember when literally every food store had Topps baseball cards in the checkout aisle. Have not seen baseball cards for sale other than hobby shops for years.
We took our young nephew to a Pittsburgh Pirates game a few years back. First time he had ever seen a baseball game. Never watched one of tv either.
Yes, the card packs with the rock-hard gum stick!
We had a card shop in town, that eventually became a collectibles shop, then finally went out of business. I knew the owner, and was shooting the breeze with him one day when someone walked in with boxes of baseball cards. The owner gave him a low offer, and when the prospective seller balked, the owner gestured towards stacks of binders with similar cards in plastic sheets and said nobody was looking to buy them.