Maybe baseball isn’t dying.

The national pastime, pelted with criticism for its long games and sagging attendance, is seeing a resurgence on sandlots, according to new data.

The number of people who played baseball in the U.S. surged 21% last year from 2014, to nearly 15.9 million, according to the Sports & Fitness Industry Association. That includes everyone from a 6-year-old swinging a bat in the backyard to a starter in the College World Series.

Most of the gain has been in casual players, those who play the game between 1 and 12 times in a year. The ranks of those dabblers grew 53%, or by nearly 2.3 million people, from 2014 to 2018.

The growth of more frequent baseball players was a modest 5% over four years. But in an era of esports and no sports—unless you count obsessing over Instagram a sport—any growth is a win. Tackle football participation dropped 3.4% in the past five years. Hockey and soccer saw one-year drops of 3.8% and 4.3%, respectively, in 2018.