This is an unparalleled era of peace and prosperity. But that is the arrogance of the present over the past. The appeal of a Subway Series is our desire to go back to a time that never was. Television was in its infancy when a Subway Series was last played. Football is a sport supremely suited to the television age.
Baseball is less so.
Maybe how football came to steal baseball's thunder is as simple as that. We couldn't imagine 100 channels, which is what people get now. All of these things accelerated the RPMs of our society. Our media culture demands things of baseball that it can't produce. Baseball ebbs and flows.