Capitalism in Baseball

The sport and its followers are obsessed with numbers and statistics. It is a capitalistic sport by any account. There is no other sport like that. It is a team sport, but every player has separate statistics. Players are judged by their numbers and not how they play on the team, for the most part. So, let me define what I mean by “capitalistic sport”. I mean that in capitalistic society every person is measured by the amount of money and success they achieve in their life. It is nothing like socialism or communism in which a group is more important than the individual. This country was build on ideas of capitalism, so there is no surprise that baseball was invented here. It is a team sport, but only the best stand out and make the most money. This is the way things work in capitalism, individual before the group. There is a competition between players on the same team and the best ones win. I am not saying that this is good or bad; it is the way it was meant to be. There is only one way to follow baseball, is to follow statistics in baseball. It is the sport with the most records and numbers. The amount of home runs players hit are more important to the public than the amount of games that the team wins. I know I will be criticized for the previous statement, but that is how I see it. I remember when McGuire and Sosa had the home run race it was the most important event of baseball of that year. Neither one of the teams that Sosa or McGuire played on made it to the World Series. There are not many people that remember what year the New York Yankees won their first championship, but everybody knows that Babe Ruth hit 60 home runs in one season. This is a perfect example of how individual achievements are more important in baseball than team achievements. This is capitalism in its purest form.