(Editor’s note: This is the first in a two part series on how to rekindle interest in baseball.)
Love turns to indifference when your passion fizzles, the desire to work at something goes away and the good things that existed disappear. That’s how I feel about major league baseball.
Back in the late 1980s-early1990s, my love for the game turned into indifference. In the ensuing years, I’ve come to dislike major league baseball. That is sad.
I grew up a baseball nut. We lived outside New York City in New Jersey and the Yankees were hot. Naturally, they became my team. They went into a tailspin right at the time I became immersed in baseball cards, backyard softball, little league, watching games on TV and doing to the stadium in the Bronx, eating hot dogs and stomping on huge paper cups to make the popping sound reverberate off the rafters.
Our parents would drive us into a game or two a year, and I even remember in eighth grade my best buddy and I riding our bikes to the local bus station, taking it across the river to NYC, catching the subway to the stadium, then returning home afterwards, and never giving it a second thought. Think of how many kids would do that today unescorted by adults, or how many adults would let their kids even entertain the thought. The world has changed.
That was part of being a fan. My buddy and I both wanted to play for the Yankees, and he almost lived his dream, making it up to the Double A level of the minor leagues. I continued to play baseball for several years, then fell away from it as other boys grew strong more quickly than I did. But my love continued.
I continued to root for the Yanks, from their horrible years in the 1960s, into the early 1970s until finally some players started to show a spark that led to a rekindling of the Bronx Bombers – Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Danny Cater, Ron Guidry, Thurman Munson. If you don’t follow baseball, those names are mix of players that came up through the Yankee farm system, and some that came through free agency, which started to kick in during that period.
Free agency helped the Yanks get a few more championships, but also sowed the seeds of discontent for me, as players and owners battled on a couple of different years, leading to strikes and shortened seasons. Slowly, I faded away.
Players jumped ship. Rosters back in the 1960s were 25 players, and from year to year only a few names changed. Today, it’s easy to have 10 new players a year on a team. You lose interest when you can’t follow the people you care about. You cannot turn over the roster and expect fans to cheer and clap. They’ll spend half their time reading the programs or uniform backs just so they can figure out who is on the team.
But the shifting player alignments aren’t the only problem. It’s also the slow play. Games take forever. What was once two-and-a-half hours to play a game is now three or more. You could fall asleep at many contests.
Add your drive time, parking, getting to your seats, the game itself and driving home and you need a least 5-6 hours to consider attending. Super diehard fans will go. But for many it’s a yawner. Something has to change. The powers that be can do it. Stay tuned for next week, when we make some easily implementable suggestions for the new baseball commissioner.
Love turns to indifference when your passion fizzles, the desire to work at something goes away and the good things that existed disappear. That’s how I feel about major league baseball.
Back in the late 1980s-early1990s, my love for the game turned into indifference. In the ensuing years, I’ve come to dislike major league baseball. That is sad.
I grew up a baseball nut. We lived outside New York City in New Jersey and the Yankees were hot. Naturally, they became my team. They went into a tailspin right at the time I became immersed in baseball cards, backyard softball, little league, watching games on TV and doing to the stadium in the Bronx, eating hot dogs and stomping on huge paper cups to make the popping sound reverberate off the rafters.
Our parents would drive us into a game or two a year, and I even remember in eighth grade my best buddy and I riding our bikes to the local bus station, taking it across the river to NYC, catching the subway to the stadium, then returning home afterwards, and never giving it a second thought. Think of how many kids would do that today unescorted by adults, or how many adults would let their kids even entertain the thought. The world has changed.
That was part of being a fan. My buddy and I both wanted to play for the Yankees, and he almost lived his dream, making it up to the Double A level of the minor leagues. I continued to play baseball for several years, then fell away from it as other boys grew strong more quickly than I did. But my love continued.
I continued to root for the Yanks, from their horrible years in the 1960s, into the early 1970s until finally some players started to show a spark that led to a rekindling of the Bronx Bombers – Catfish Hunter, Reggie Jackson, Danny Cater, Ron Guidry, Thurman Munson. If you don’t follow baseball, those names are mix of players that came up through the Yankee farm system, and some that came through free agency, which started to kick in during that period.
Free agency helped the Yanks get a few more championships, but also sowed the seeds of discontent for me, as players and owners battled on a couple of different years, leading to strikes and shortened seasons. Slowly, I faded away.
Players jumped ship. Rosters back in the 1960s were 25 players, and from year to year only a few names changed. Today, it’s easy to have 10 new players a year on a team. You lose interest when you can’t follow the people you care about. You cannot turn over the roster and expect fans to cheer and clap. They’ll spend half their time reading the programs or uniform backs just so they can figure out who is on the team.
But the shifting player alignments aren’t the only problem. It’s also the slow play. Games take forever. What was once two-and-a-half hours to play a game is now three or more. You could fall asleep at many contests.
Add your drive time, parking, getting to your seats, the game itself and driving home and you need a least 5-6 hours to consider attending. Super diehard fans will go. But for many it’s a yawner. Something has to change. The powers that be can do it. Stay tuned for next week, when we make some easily implementable suggestions for the new baseball commissioner.