Attendance is on pace to drop for the sixth straight year, something that has not happened since at least before World War II. As of Thursday, per-game attendance was down 3.8 percent from 2017, the largest single-year dip since the economy plopped into the sewer in 2008.
The development has prompted plenty of inward looking by the great pastime's national consciousness: members of the academy, the sporting press, and management itself. After initially chalking up the decline to a cool, rainy spring, Commissioner Rob Manfred acknowledged in June that Major League Baseball was "concerned that there's something more to it than the weather.