VOA标准英语2008年-The Crack of the Bat's Not as Sweet a Sound for（在线收听）

These are four baseball fields surrounding a rural school. School fields used to be prime sandlot locations for impromptu games, but now many stay empty all summer long

Top-level pro baseball teams still draw big crowds and make millions of dollars a year. And plenty of other professional, collegiate, and amateur teams still play the game.
　

John Young, who conceived of Major League Baseball's RBI program that is now working in 200 inner cities, poses with a graduate: Coco Crisp of the Boston Red Sox

Yet many of the vacant spaces that Americans call sandlots, where kids by the millions once brought their own wooden bats, leather gloves, and cowhide-covered balls — and picked teams among themselves — are eerily empty. And this worries those who look to the future of the sport. They remember when boys of all abilities who played sandlot ball — and most were boys — remained fans and paying customers for life.

Today's baseball is highly organized, focused on winning rather than having fun, and — some say — over-coached. Only highly skilled players get much chance to play. Ordinary kids have other playtime options, including sedentary video games. And as housing developments have filled in the open spaces, there are fewer sandlots.
　

There used to be millions of kids like this who just grabbed their mitts and met others for pick-up games of sandlot baseball. Now the game is highly organized

Major-league baseball is funding outreach programs to re-introduce the game to kids in the inner cities, where basketball — which is cheaper and faster — is now the overwhelming game of choice. Baseball's heavy recruiting in Latin America and Asia has increased its international appeal but done nothing to bring small-town and rural American kids back to the sandlots.

One day, say the worriers, baseball's decreasing grassroots appeal could hit the game where it hurts — in the columns marked attendance and profits.