I used to like baseball a lot. I played it. I collected the cards. My favorite team was the Milwaukee Braves. This was all a long time ago. Fred Costello is still grinding the organ but everything has changed. Gone are the Knot Hole afternoon games when you could get out of school to see the game. Gone is the game itself.
The Red Wings had a good crowd tonight, eight or nine thousand, but no more than a handful were watching the game. The whole world has moved on. The management provides distractions between every inning because no one is watching the game. And that may actually be backwards. No one is watching the game because the management is bent on providing distractions. The guys that used to sell popcorn, peanuts and beer can’t even compete with the concessions stands. We watched people walk up and down the aisles with piles of food, ice cream sundaes and 25 ounce beers for the whole game. It was all rather startling to an old timer. There was a game here but nobody gave a shit.
There is no hole in the home rum fence waiting for a ball that would give the hitter a brand new car like there was on Norton Street. The outfield is an LED overload. They blast snippets of the Violent Femmes, the Ramones and Queen. If they played more than forty five seconds they would have to pay royalties. If this was a soccer game you couldn’t take your eyes off the game. Maybe that is the whole point.
1 Comment
Amen. Baseball is a beautiful game but perhaps too subtle for these times.