Hlas column: As world speeds up, will baseball keep up?

Last Saturday night, I was in the Kinnick Stadium press box watching a football game.

It was Penn State against Iowa. And I was watching it ... on my laptop computer.

Sure, sure, I watched the game on the field, too. But in these days of miracles and wonder, I could also watch it on the Internet. Which helped, because the feed from ESPN was a few seconds behind real time so I knew what to follow on the computer screen to answer questions about plays that had just transpired. The replays were also useful, naturally.

The good old days? For sports fans, they're now. Look at the smorgasbord of college football games you can watch on television (and your computer) every Saturday. If you want to pay for it, you can get every NFL game piped into your home.

It wasn't all that long ago when televised games didn't have the score and clock on the screen at all times. How did we live?

The constant thread in this is now-now-now. That seems to be the constant thread in everything, anymore.

Which makes me wonder where baseball, the slowest team sport in this speeded-up age, is heading.

I'm a lifelong baseball fan who has seen major-league games in 10 ballparks that have been knocked down or blown up, and a few that are relative infants. I've seen, by my estimation, 333,333 throws from pitchers to first basemen to try to keep base runners close to the bag. Two or three resulted in actual pick-offs. It was all good.

But this was one of the few years since I was 10 when I didn't attend at least one big-league game somewhere, and I feel no void because of it.

I read in the agate of Tuesday's Gazette sports section that a pitcher named Volquez is starting for Cincinnati in its playoff-opener today against Philadelphia. I've never heard of him, a Game 1 playoff pitcher. In the words of the great Bob Seger, I've got so much more to think about. Deadlines and commitments. What to leave in. What to leave out.

Attendance at major league games was down slightly for the second-straight year. It's still robust for many franchises, of course. The Phillies, Red Sox and Twins were at 100 percent capacity for 81 home dates, and the Yankees, Dodgers, Cubs and Cardinals have no attendance worries and haven't for a long time, if ever.

Credit ambience, tradition, or both as much as anything.

But this year's All-Star Game had an average of 12.1 million television viewers over its time slot, its fewest ever. In the mid-1970s, it was seen by three times as many people.

This year's Midsummer Classic, as they call it, was still the highest-rated program that night. But there's just so much more to choose from now.

Yet, the Chicago Bears-New York Giants Week 4 NFL game Sunday night was seen by an average of 20.9 million people in its time period. And it was a crummy game.

Baseball was king in this country for a long time. That time is gone. The game is still vital and immensely popular. Perhaps it always will be. This country continues to produce terrific young ballplayers. My city of Cedar Rapids does its part.

But MLB's playoffs start today at 12:37 p.m., Iowa time, with Texas against Tampa Bay. I'm guessing it won't be a significant part of your busy day.