Hotshot - I sort of disagree about no one going to see relievers. With their entry music, and big strikeout arms, I think a lot of the good closers are popular and have followings. Certainly Rivera was popular and his coming into a game to "Enter Sandman" got everyone up. It's not just him and Hoffman either. Even Papelbon when he was with the Sox and came in to "Shipping up to Boston" was huge. I think we pretty much have dreaded our closers, at least between The Chief and Doo, but folks get up for the drama of the 9th.
I consider myself a connoisseur of the relief pitcher. I think the closer entrance is the best spectacle in all of baseball that isn't an actual baseball play. The Nats have never done it particularly well (the most exciting thing about Sean Doolittle entering the field is seeing a little cart), but I am literally getting chills right now as I type this reminiscing about experiencing Papelbon entering Fenway Park while I lived in Boston, or experiencing Bobby Jenks entering US Cellular Field while BOD blasted over the speakers in Chicago. And I say experienced, not watched, because the closer actually entering the field of play was the least important thing going on, more impactful was the music, the stuff going on on the scoreboard, and of course the absolute craziness and energy in the stands. Even when I simply watch YouTube videos of closers entering the game in Japan, players I don't know anything about, it feels like I'm watching the most important thing to ever happen in human history.
Not to say that non-closers aren't a spectacle also. Some have good entrances too: who can forget Todd Coffey running onto the field while the scoreboard timed him, who can forget Ryan Mattheus coming out to Katy Perry, or knowing that Aaron Barret was about to enter the field because you heard the first few bars of a rock cover of The Bear Went Over the Mountain. There are massive Harper or Zimmerman home runs that have had less of an emotional impact on me than the act of these three obscure relief pitchers entering the field of play. But as a relief pitcher connoisseur, the real payoff of these middle relievers is their wacky deliveries. You see relievers doing all sorts of crazy things that would never fly in a 5-inning starter. Every submarine pitcher, every side-armer, every guy who does whatever weird timing thing Oliver Perez does, they are all treasures, jewels in a baseball tapestry.
You also never know exactly which relief pitchers are going to enter a game. You know probably several days in advance who the starters are, but with relief pitchers there is the additional draw of wondering who you are going to see.
I know, in the back of my head, that it's all a fraud. These guys are generally not as talented as the starters. They have short-term relationships with whatever team they're on and are among the more replaceable guys on the roster. Getting 2-3 outs, even in the 9th inning, isn't very hard by MLB standards. We blow them out of proportion, I know. To me, knowing that this is all blown out of proportion makes the spectacle all the more enjoyable. It is sanctioned excess.
Then again, I am not the marginal baseball fan that MLB is desperately trying to bring into the fold. I already follow baseball closely year to year. I already watch it on TV daily in the summer. I am already posting on an MLB fan forum during the offseason. But if you were to ask me to impress a non baseball fan with the sport, for sure I would take him to the top of the 9th inning in a stadium with good acoustics, where the home team is good at video editing and has a lead of 3 or fewer runs.