The Cost of Doing Business

Yesterday, the city of Chicago held a parade for the Jackie Robinson West team, U.S. Little League champions.  There was a nice rally downtown at Millennium Park along with heartfelt sentiments expressed by the likes of the Cubs’ Theo Epstein and the Sox Kenny Williams.

Epstein told the Sun-Times that the baseball establishment needs to “ask the question how we can get young kids playing baseball again, especially in the inner city.”  The answer is, it can’t to any real extent.

In 1981, African-American players comprised 18.7 of major-league rosters; today, the figure stands at 8.3 percent.  What happened?  Basically, baseball changed its way of doing business at the same time the nature of youth sports changed.  To listen to Epstein and Williams is to hear nostalgia for the old days of kids playing the game in summer from dawn to dusk; ex-Sox player Harold Baines actually said that’s what he did growing up.  Things were different indeed in the time before free agency.

For example, as a 14-year old in 1967 I could buy a general admission ticket to a Sox game for $2, which would come out to just under $14 adjusted for inflation.  In 1981, the same ticket would have cost me $3, or $7.13 today; in other words, the cost of a ticket actually declined.  Consider what that means.

Kids could play the game and then go see their heroes on a regular basis without plunging their families into debt.  That’s just not possible anymore.  Yes, the White Sox have $7 seats in what they call the “upper corners,” but these are among the worst seats in professional sports.  It’s like Clare said about the game she went to for summer camp—you don’t even feel that you’re there.  When I was paying that $2-3, I headed straight for the left field foul pole and usually found a seat within the first three or four rows.  For all intents and purposes, I could’ve shaken hands with Tommie Agee or Ken Berry.

Now, baseball is a hyper big business, while the fan-player connection fostered by low ticket prices has been severed.  At the same time, the advent of travel sports has strained family budgets.  With Clare in travel softball, we barely had enough money for household expenses, let alone anything for a ballgame or two.  And, if money was tight for us, what’s it like in the inner city?  I’d like to know how many major-league games the Jackie Robinson kids have been to the past couple of years.

All sports are expensive, but no one complains about the cost of football or basketball tickets.  Baseball is held to a different standard as the first if not current national pastime.  It’d be nice if Jackie Robinson West could bring back the old days.  I just don’t see how.