Baseball is not dead, not one bit.
After a long period of under-repsentation in online search when compared to that juggernaut sports league called The National Football League, or the NFL, baseball, in the form of Major League Baseball, has made a stirring comeback. As of this writing, 11 of the top 20 keyword in Google Trends are baseball-related.
Here’s the full list with baseball-related search terms in bold: national coffee day, walter payton, tampa bay rays, red sox, evan longoria, braves, cantaloupe, paw paw, atlanta braves, cardinals, orioles, phillies
demi moore and ashton, boston redsox, yankees, extremely loud and i…, camaro zl1, texas rangers, courageous
revenge.
What all of this shows is that America’s not only still interested in baseball, but the interest is increased this year over 2010. Yes, the reason’s because we’re into baseball’s playoff period, but last year the intensity of search for baseball-related topics didn’t lead to a result where baseball dominated the Google Trends reports.
The last time this blogger has seen one organization dominated Google Trends, was the NFL just after the lockout was ended and the NFL Free Agent period started. At one point, the league represented a whopping 14 of 20 searches.
Why baseball? I think it’s a matter of the massive collapse of the Atlanta Braves and especially the Boston Red Sox – two organizations that caught a number of fans and observers by surprise this year.
The difference is the NFL managed to continue dominating search for the better part of the week after the lockout was over. Can baseball match that performance?
Stay tuned.