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Goodbye to the 'boys of summer'

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By JOHN NASH

Of Cabbages and Kings

Published: July 4, 2009

Get your autographed baseballs now, while there are still players left to sign them. Our one-time national sport appears to be on its determined way to extinction - or perhaps to relocation in Cuba or Japan?

Worried sports reporters, commentators and executives seem puzzled by the rapidly dropping attendance rates at professional games.

Attendance is reportedly down 5 percent across the sport in this year alone. Tampa's Rays rank 24th in average attendance, which moved the team's president to comment that professional "baseball may not work here ... in the worst major-league market in the sport."

But it's no mystery to me why baseball is withering as a professional spectator sport: The cause is a witch's brew of economics and significantly changing social values. At an economically depressed time, when the average fan is running out of cash to pay sky-high ticket and refreshment prices, general interest in watching grown boys chew, scratch and spit is fast disappearing.

When teams pay players million-dollar salaries, they have to pass those ridiculous costs on to the fans. There's a parallel to be seen in the failure of our automobile industry, which carelessly paid its workers more than the market would stand, and so failed to compete with manufacturers working with somewhat more reasonable labor costs.

Baseball is a game; no game player is worth anything close to what these teams have been offering: $50,000 a year for the best players seems more than generous to me.

But even were the teams to cut present bloated salaries and ticket prices by 90 percent and also reduce the price of peanuts, popcorn and soda pop to something nearly reasonable, attendance will continue to fall.

The underlying reason has to do with relatively recent, major changes in the character of our general population.

Games, as was obvious to Roman emperors trying to divert the population's attention from significant and worrisome problems facing the empire, can be an "opiate to the masses." They also observed that classic Greek games, such as foot races and discus throwing drew small crowds; nude wrestling and boxing fared only slightly better.

What really brought in the masses were the more violent and bloody spectacles, such as fights to the death between gladiators or the feeding of Christians to wild animals.

Sadly, we've advanced but little since those times. We'd much rather watch slam-bang football, a smash-'em-up car race or a snorting monster truck show than see baseball players scratch their armpits (or worse).

Television and movies have created a population that revels in violence, action, noise and spectacle.

Sorry Babe and Lou, but baseball is simply out of favor and may never recover - not even were the owners to accomplish the seeming impossible feat of restructuring costs and prices to make it somewhat worthwhile to attend a game.

Looks to me like winter has come sooner than expected for the boys of summer. It's no great loss!

Of Cabbages and Kings is a regular feature of this paper. The author welcomes rational and pertinent comment, which may be sent to him at john@have-eye.com.

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