Sandyk wrote an excellent post that I believe captures why many people remain die-hard baseball fans in an age where soccer, football, and basketball are taking over.

"There’s a ton of beauty in baseball.  There is indeed flux and it occurs in each individual count, each inning, each game, each week, and each season.  Every season is a 26-week soap opera, complete with twists and turns.  Watching a baseball game without some context of the situation or what is at stake is like non-alcoholic beer or decaffeinated coffee—it may be satisfying to some, but it misses the point for me.  Sometimes, it’s something emotional (like the relationship between the city of Boston and so-called “Curse of the Bambino”) and sometimes it’s flat-out gutty (did anyone else see Curt Schilling’s bloody ankle on Sunday?).  But here’s why I think it’s sad that scientists of any nationality are missing out: it’s a beautiful chaos that can be quantified and analyzed in the world of statistics and probabilities "