Hot take: baseball in 2021 is as fun and exciting as it has ever been. For all the doom and gloom surrounding its decline in popularity and the slow death of the game, the actual product on the field is quite captivating, with many more years of excitement to come. Sure, there may be a little more “three true outcomes” involved than usual. I understand that too many walks can be aesthetically displeasing, but are strikeouts and home runs really that bad? I enjoy watching both pitchers and hitters perform the best, most dominant feats that they possibly can. It’s a satisfying, definitive outcome. Even with all the outcry about not enough balls being put in play, you can still expect to see at least a couple per half-inning on average, allowing plenty of opportunity for defense and baserunning to impact the game. 

While the three-true-outcomes issue is, in my opinion, overblown, the excitement surrounding the current players and teams certainly is not. Human beings continue to evolve, and players continue to push closer and closer to the limit of just how good humans can be at baseball. Athletic specimens like Fernando Tatis Jr., Vladimir Guerrero Jr., and perhaps most  impressively, Shohei Ohtani, populate the league and create many enthralling storylines with their talent and charisma. Exciting races are in progress for individual achievements, including the American League home run battle between Guerrero, Ohtani, and Salvador Perez (Update: Way to be, Salvy).. Speaking of Ohtani, he is displaying a versatility not thought to be humanly possible and was recently named by TIME Magazine as one of the 100 most influential people of 2021. Playoff races are as good as ever; each league’s wild-card race is a wonderful, multi-team chaotic jumble (just the way it should be), while the juggernauts in San Francisco and Los Angeles battle it out for the game’s best record and NL West supremacy. 

Everyone loves to talk about how many issues the game has: the games take too long, there’s not enough action, the fanbase is too old and white, it’s on the decline. In my opinion, the current dynamic crop of young, electric, multicultural talent on the field will sort these issues out. People still see the sport as too dry and boring, but histrionics such as bat flips and other celebrations are more socially accepted than ever before, and longer games only bring us more excitement and anticipation. Pundits spend far too much time railing against all the negatives in the game, which surely contributes to MLB’s ongoing marketing issues. Announcers can get overly negative on broadcasts, and writers find ways to excessively pick apart social issues and cancel just about every team. Could you picture basketball announcers complaining about too many threes getting shot, or football writers denouncing almost every team to make the postseason? It’s been great to see a full, normal season with stadiums packed again, and it’ll be satisfying to see a normal October with teams actually playing in front of their own fans. It should be a phenomenal month for baseball, and I can’t wait to sit back and enjoy it. (Update: October was pretty cool).