'Baseball is a nineteenth-century pastoral game'
I would certainly agree with that statement by Carlin. The slow, plodding pace of the game and those 'vast empty spaces in the action' you correctly noted are obviously ill-suited to our fast-paced, modern, professional lifestyles.
I greatly appreciate the complex strategy of football - with 11 men in motion simultaneously on both sides on every play, in a nearly infinite number of playbook variations, it's a far more complicated game than baseball. Then again that simplicity is probably why baseball is a more appealing summer picnic pasttime.