It’s been at least a week since the Los Angeles Dodgers defeated the New York Yankees in five games to win the 2024 World Series.

I say, “at least,” because I don’t know for sure without looking it up, and shouldn’t I have vivid memories of where I was while watching every inning of the Fall Classic? I should, but I don’t. I barely paid attention to it. I know I wrote that I was looking forward to the 2024 edition that gave us historic rivals from the two largest markets in America, but I simply couldn’t bring myself to sit down and watch one inning. Yes, that’s a serious admission coming from a sports junkie, but this is how hard baseball has fallen in my life over the past three decades.

What moments am I aware of from the 2024 World Series? I know Freddie Freeman won Game 1 for the Dodgers with a walk-off grand slam in the bottom of the 10th inning. Two Yankees fans “robbed” Mookie Betts of a foul ball in Game 4. Oh yeah, New York blew a huge lead to lose Game 5 and the World Series, four games to one.

Other than those moments–snippets that I found on YouTube–the 2024 World Series, which was available on Fox, was just something I learned about in passing.

Why didn’t I watch one second of a World Series I said I was excited about? I just don’t care all that much about baseball outside of the Pirates. I suppose that’s because I don’t feel like Major League Baseball cares about baseball outside of the Yankees, Dodgers, Red Sox and a few other organizations from huge television markets and/or national brands.

In addition to its lopsided economic system, baseball has a serious branding problem, and that’s why its ratings–even for the World Series–are so low. Yes, this year’s matchup between the Dodgers and Yankees garnered some of the highest television ratings we’ve seen in recent years–according to MLB.com, an average of 15.8 million people viewed all five games on various Fox platforms–but that had more to do with the size of the markets the two participants represented and less to do with baseball’s grip on the nation as a whole. The 2023 Fall Classic between the Rangers and Diamondbacks drew the lowest television ratings in the history of the event, but I paid more attention to it because I thought it was a great story. You had two wildcard teams going at it with Texas ultimately prevailing in five games to capture its first championship in franchise history.

To me, 2023 was the more compelling World Series, complete with the viral social media video of the lifelong fan who collapsed into tears of joy after the Rangers recorded the final out to secure their first title. 

The NFL is the perfect model because it has a salary cap and revenue sharing; because of this, every fan of every team feels like they have a chance to celebrate a Super Bowl title at some point. The league also has a plethora of individual stars who are household names. How many professional football players would you recognize if you saw them walking down the street? Dozens upon dozens, right? How many MLB players would you know if you saw them out and about? I’m guessing the number would be way less.

In fairness, I believe baseball is trying its best to get more people invested in its product. The rules changes to speed up the game and make it more exciting have been effective. I love the expanded postseason field that keeps more teams and fanbases in the fight until the end.

But the sport still has a long way to go, and I might be beating a dead horse, but it may never get there if it doesn’t one day adopt a salary cap.