Small-Ball teams like the A’s can’t compete int the market, and it’s turning into too much of a hitter’s game

I know that the large number of young players around the league will be enough to drive sales, and keep popularity at a high level, but I completely agree about other teams fans..
I did the SF, LA and San Diego road trip with my GF last week and it was an eye openor to say the least. SD was great, maybe its because I went to school there for some time so I have a biased, or because their fans might not care all that much but everyone was great to us. LA was a complete mess, and I thought more than once while sitting in the bleachers that something bad was going to happen. I guess its just how it is though, people want to go to games and get wasted, talk a whole bunch of trash, and have 30,000 friends to back them up.. I dont know, its just not the way I want to watch a game

I’m glad you made this post

Want a jolley good Sunday afternoon? Try going a Raiders game(huge open bar) in say a Bronco’s jersey.

Real Sports on HBO did a show about drinking and sports. Sports really have become just a huge drunkfest with expensive tickets. Not going to stop anytime soon, teams are just making way to much money on booze to even make an attempt to stop it.

I’m just curious if anyone who has been a fan for longer than I have is noticing anything they find discouraging…

I became a fan of baseball in 1965 or ‘66 when I was four or five years old. My dad, mom, and older brothers were already big fans, and I was exposed to, and learned a lot about baseball from them. There was no DH. There were no playoffs other than the World Series, and WS games were only played in the daytime (until 1971). We were Pirates fans, and I grew up in an era in which it was great fun to be a Pirates fan (it was because I hated the Reds so much in 1972 that I adopted the A’s for my American League team- after moving to Oakland in the eighties, they’ve become my home team).

So I grew up in an era in which people were better behaved (in general) at the ballpark. There has always been a low life element who start trouble at the game, but I have noticed much more of this behavior in recent years. And also I have noticed fans who really aren’t there to watch the game. I would say that the rank and file mlb attendee has “dumbed down” considerably (especially in terms of baseball knowledge) over the last forty years. And in regards to the heckling, you are 100% right when you observe that the modern fan is just terrible at heckling: I rarely hear any creativity whatsoever (this really is mirroring our cardboard cutout Mcculture). Like you said, it’s always “you suck” or “steroids”… embarassing. Basically, the sportsmanship of the modern fan is abysmal. No respect for anything.

Accessibility to the players in this day and age always comes with a price; and players recognize their commodity. It’s nice (but rare nowadays) to see that some players resist the temptation to separate themselves from the fans. A great economic and cultural gap has opened between the ordinary fan and their adored players; this will only continue to widen.

I feel that major league baseball has been pushing away the true fans. With the A’s if you don’t have cable you can’t watch baseball anymore, and the radio coverage is so bad that it’s obvious the A’s aren’t trying to attract new local fans to the team (of course modern kids would probably never listen to baseball on the radio anyway). Also, I don’t see I never see the old codgers at Giants games anymore- and they’re disappearing from the A’s games too-even without super high ticket prices. I think it’s partially because of a simple and natural decline in their numbers, but beyond that it’s economic and, most significantly, I think they’ve just kind of burned out on mlbaseball glitz and hype. I’ve talked with numerous fans older than myself who reminisce about the good old days when they loved to go to games, but now they feel kind of overwhelmed by the ballpark experience. I remember my mom (a superb and wonderfully knowledgeable fan) saying it was “too loud” at the ballpark these days for her taste (and she died in 1995). In regard to that, I was at the game earlier this year when the PA was out for the first three innings of the game, and it was magical. The feeling of being at the ballpark was somehow amplified by the absence of the tunes and ads that are so “important” to keep the interest of the modern attendee. I remember being disgusted the first time I saw a full blown ad run on the big screen at the Coliseum; I stood up and booed, causing about two hundred people (lemmings?) to turn and stare at me like I was insane.

I still love baseball like crazy, but I’m certain that the fan experience we get now is FAR INFERIOR to the fan experience of the past. I do not have a good feeling about the future of baseball.

In a certain respect, I like that there is more rowdiness at games. Our time is much less courteous and much more violent than 30 or 40 years ago, and if sports rowdiness provides an outlet for these folks, I think it’s better to have it all in one supervised place than starting a bunch of barfights all over town.

there will be floating umpires

For reading my mind and saying what I’ve wanted to say in a fanpost for the last few weeks. I think it’s absolutely ridiculous to abuse opposing teams fans, just because they happen to like a certain team. Fans are treating this like each team is a country, and it’s war on all opposing countries. My hope would be that people could realize that’s it’s just a sport, and at the end of the day, that opposing Angels fan could be your next door neighbor/best friend/etc.

I don’t know what to do to fix this problem, really. I feel like this isn’t just isolated in baseball stadiums. I feel like the American culture, in general, is changing (some good, some bad). Not that alcohol is the sole problem, but maybe at least having family sections and drinking sections separated. After all, you don’t take your 3 year old to the bar.

A little over a hundred years ago, baseball “kranks” were known as gambling, drunken rowdies, and women and children were supposed to steer clear of National League games. Ban Johnson, in fact, advertised the American League as the nice, polite league, a provider of baseball entertainment to decent society.

Maybe this kind of thing ebbs and flows. But I’d recommend staying away from night games, which always have more drinking than day games.

the signs telling us to make noise and clap…that irks me to no end.

…but then I think these kinds of behaviors that you mention as well as seeing the business side toward baseball is nothing really all that new. The behaviors have always been there — the fan razzing, the drukeness, the intimidation toward fans of the opposing teams; just maybe to not this level or degree.

The baseball as business has always been there, too. It’s just that today, many more fans discuss players from a point-of-view that discusses their contract status and how much bang the players are giving for their buck or what they might fetch in a trade because of their contract status. Having developed a relatively recent [within the last 10 years] inerest in the displine of Economics and Business in general, I now actually enjoy this aspect of the game just as much as the game itself.

I’ve been an Athletics fan since the ‘81 season when I was 11. The sport has changed in a lot of ways [for example I recall Ozzie Smith, then one of the best players in the game, signing a contract that paid him the unbelievable sum of over one million dollars a season]. But more than baseball changing, I’ve changed a lot more and see life — and how Athletics’ baseball fits into it — a whole lot differently now. Perhaps that’s really what is (or has) happening (happened) to you? And now you’re seeing things in a whole different light from the perspective of an older and more mature person? And, if I’m correct, some of the things that you’re noticing now do not sit all that well with you. I’m just saying! Then, I could be wrong. I’m only stating what had happened to me and that your experience might be similar to mine.

And that’s a ver good deal considering what the players cost and what you’d have to fork over if you wanted to watch a game in person. At home, you can have adult beverages on the cheap, not worry above driving home, and no waiting in line to open up your microwave. Yeah, $200 seems expensive but it’s actually a steal if you stop and consider the value and convience.