Baseball Helps Marriages?

I am a bit leery of this study reported from divorce360.com in Study Shows Couples Stay Together if They Watch Baseball Together:

"If you’re married and you live in a city that has a professional baseball you’re less likely to get a divorce than if you live in a city without a pro ball team, according to a study done by Professor Howard Markman, a psychologist and the director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies, at the University of Denver."

What causes a divorce seems too varied to be accounted by only to the existence of a professional baseball team in the couple's city. I am not alone in being skeptical:

Dr. David Popenoe, a sociology professor and co-director of the National Marriage Project at Rutgers, doesn’t put much stock in Markman’s baseball theory. “There may be some lose coalition between divorce and baseball, as far as the geographical factors are concerned. But it almost like saying a lot of deaths occur in hospitals,” the Rutgers professor added.

Just as I agree with the following and would add doing anything together that both enjoy ought to help the marriage (especially if they talk to each other during their time together):

Popenoe was more sympathetic to Markman’s finding that couples that attend baseball games have a better chance of their marriage lasting longer than those that don’t. If the University of Denver professor is saying that a couple has a good time attending baseball games get some marital benefit, he would agree. However, he added they would probably get the same benefit if they went fishing together or went bowling.