Salciunas week 10

After reading both "A Perfect Baseball Day", and "The Relationship of Fantasy Football Participation With NFL Television Ratings", my eyes opened to things I love that I did not know about. I always knew of the Negro Leagues and the amount of people who participate in fantasy football (to an extant), but there were multiple areas that I did not know about these two topics.

What Brian Carroll points out to me in "A Perfect Baseball Day", is a story that seems to be often untold. As an avid baseball fan, I love hearing stories about the sport. Whether it be stories of former superstars, or just the ones my father told me about his games in the local men's leagues. Throughout high school, I learned much about how baseball originated including the Negro Leagues, and after the movie 42 was shown in theatres, my interest grew; however, it took until this recent article for me to learn how much of a role black newspapers took to help push for the Negro Leagues, as well as destroy them. The coverage was absolutely phenomenal. African American's all over the country were interested in the league. Not only because it was arguably more exciting than the MLB, but it was a source of pride. Their fellow African American's stood out in every community where the teams resided, and names were becoming well-known; mainly in large part thanks to the Pittsburgh Courier, an African American run newspaper. Now as much as these newspapers portrayed the stars as heroes, every good story has to come to an end. In the 1950s, following the breaking of the color barrier in the Major Leagues of Baseball, the Negro League's began losing coverage. It got to the point where Jackie Robinson was considered a traitor to his fellow black community. The Negro League's soon diminished once the coverage moved toward players like Robinson, Roy Campanella, Larry Doby, and Monte Irvin.

Now today, you could say that everybody in America, even if they do not participate, knows or has heard of fantasy football. John A. Fortunato sure knows how to grab the readers attention when throwing out a number like 30 million. I know fantasy football is a world wide game, but never would I think a number like that would be the amount of people who participate. However, that is not the point of my response. It is exactly what the title states. Until this article that since I began participating in fantasy football, never did I notice how much my attention toward football increased. When I was younger, I would normally watch the Eagles game, put on whatever game was on after it, stop paying attention, and walk away. Although they do need to do more research to see how much a difference it has made, he made a valiant point about how the NFL needs to begin considering which games fantasy football stars are competing in and if those ratings jump. If a poll were to be taken asking if people tune in to certain games because of the fantasy football players in play, I would have to agree that I do watch it mainly because of a certain player on the field, and not the fact that I just want to watch a game between the Denver Broncos and the Jacksonville Jaguars. No love for Jacksonville here, but much for my starting quarterback Peyton Manning.