Baseball Is Dying

[Snapolit1]

Originally Posted by Pat R

That's one of the main problems with most pro sports today it's more about being a business instead of a sport.

Baseball was always a cut throat business. Read a book about Jacob Ruppert or Branch Rickey.

I am not pointing a finger at any board member, and people are of course entitled to their views and opinions, but a large part of what's wrong with everything right now is people aren't educated with a historical perspective. If you are a student of baseball (and I hardly consider myself one), you know that the game has been a cut throat in your face business since the 1890s. Leagues crushing leagues through illegal tactics, teams burying other teams and financially destroying them, players moving for more money, management screwing over players, players cheating, etc., etc. Even what the major leagues did in raiding the Negro Leagues for talent was financially despicable.

The one refrain that makes me throw up a little every time I hear it is "things are so different today. What I was growing up players would have been happy to play for free . . . . they just loved the game." Oh please. Yeah, most of them had zero power to force anything. And people like Gehrig and Ruth who had clout held out repeatedly for more money.

I guess as I approach my 60s I need to soon adopt the obligatory old guy "everything is so much worse today than it ever was" mentality. Not there yet. I'd make a joke about maybe I'm watching the wrong TV news network but I'll leave that for another day.

[Pat R]

Originally Posted by Snapolit1

Baseball was always a cut throat business. Read a book about Jacob Ruppert or Branch Rickey.

I am not pointing a finger at any board member, and people are of course entitled to their views and opinions, but a large part of what's wrong with everything right now is people aren't educated with a historical perspective. If you are a student of baseball (and I hardly consider myself one), you know that the game has been a cut throat in your face business since the 1890s. Leagues crushing leagues through illegal tactics, teams burying other teams and financially destroying them, players moving for more money, management screwing over players, players cheating, etc., etc. Even what the major leagues did in raiding the Negro Leagues for talent was financially despicable.

The one refrain that makes me throw up a little every time I hear it is "things are so different today. What I was growing up players would have been happy to play for free . . . . they just loved the game." Oh please. Yeah, most of them had zero power to force anything. And people like Gehrig and Ruth who had clout held out repeatedly for more money.

I guess as I approach my 60s I need to soon adopt the obligatory old guy "everything is so much worse today than it ever was" mentality. Not there yet. I'd make a joke about maybe I'm watching the wrong TV news network but I'll leave that for another day.

It's just my opinion Steve but I'm sure that I am not the only one who feels this way. From the early 70's until the middle of 1994 if there was a baseball game on T.V. and I was home I was watching it, since that time I've watched John Smoltz play more rounds of golf than I've watched baseball games.

Same thing with Boxing I used to be a huge boxing fan until PPV ruined the sport.

My wife and I used to go to both Nascar weekends in Dover Delaware but gradually they kept raising the hotel prices until a $125 hotel room was $500-$600 a night. I actually called the chamber of commerce and complained that they were chasing the real fans away. She told me that it was because there wasn't enough rooms to support the amount of people.
She didn't have an answer when I pointed out that when we first started going there were just as many people 150,000-200,000 and that it was before all the drivers and teams had there own motor homes and used to stay in the hotels and also before several new large hotels were built next to the track. When we went we used to meet up with several friends from our area who stayed at a campsite right across from the track, many had been staying there for over 20 years. The track bought the campsite and made everyone purchase at least two tickets for all the races Friday, Saturday and Sunday in order to reserve a spot.

I don't think it was more than 5 years after I had the conversation with the woman from the chamber of commerce that attendance at the Dover race had dropped to about 20,000-25,000 at most for the cup race on Sunday.