The scrappy American “brand” of baseball has been fading for a while in my opinion. A lot of what you’re seeing with all these flashy distractions is the Latin influence on the sport. The difference in a lot of those players and the American kids is that a lot of these Latin kids grew up without a pot to piss in and watching soccer. Watch how teams like Miami, FAU, and FIU wait outside the box so they can listen to their walkout song a little longer, do some stupid hand gesture when they happen to hit a double, or try to “bat flip” if they ever get ahold of one. I never saw as much of that playing ball on the west coast. The difference is alot of these flashy Latin kids can actually play ball, it will be a miracle if there’s more than a few white kids playing professional baseball in 20 years.