The
new video board going up in left at Wrigley Field will be just a shade under
twice the size of the beautifully anachronistic scoreboard that dates to
1937. The past will not so much meet the
future as get lost in its shadow.
It’s
funny how we all start off “old-school” in sports. Kids shoot hoops in the alley or play a game
of pickup at the park. The game, not the
venue, counts. The same holds for high
school, at least all the gyms and fields I ever stepped on and for those
colleges not part of the ESPN-NCAA sports-industrial complex. Players play, spectators watch, and nobody
thinks of their comfort.
Ditto
minor-league baseball, where the experience is given a coating of romance and
nostalgia a la Bull Durham. Then everything changes as soon as the game
turns “big league”—fans get their concourse mall, players their McMansion
clubhouse and owners their obscene profits.
But we lose something intangible with our reliance on instant replay. And domes and luxury suites….
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