Interesting thoughts. It isn't just baseball going through tektonic upheavals.
Re: your point #1, my son-in-law is a bigger sports nut than I am, but he never actually sits there and watches a full game, just like you say. It never ceases to amaze me. It's not that the game can't keep his attention, it's more than that. Watching all of the game has absolutely no draw on him. To me, a game is a story. Miss part of it and you may miss the key part of the story. It's like reading half the chapters in a book. You can't possibly understand the whole book. But to him, he couldn't care less about the book, about the story. When he wants to watch he watches. When he cares, he cares. But he's indifferent to what I find most appealing, the whole story. The highlights are enough. Now me, the hightlights mean nothing WITHOUT the story. As someone trained in hermenuetics, context is EVERYTHING. Without context you don't have meaning.