Humphrey Bogart is Really Dead

[tonyb]

As to soccer or futbol or football or whatever you wanna call it ...

Who was the first to say "Soccer is the game of the future in the U.S., and it always will be"?

 

[HudsonHawk]

Me, I dig the closeups of the dancing girls they trot out during breaks in the action on the field. Much better view than you get from that hundred-dollar seat at the stadium.

As an NFL season ticket holder, I can honestly say...the view of the dancing girls in person ain't bad either.

 

[HudsonHawk]

As to baseball attendance being up so dramatically from 60 years ago ... Sure. Many more teams, and many more people. The U.S. population is nearly double what it was then. And a large slice of that demographic are Hispanic, and baseball is big among los Latinos Americanos.

All true. I'm just saying that people have been sounding baseball's death knell for 50 years, and there's simply no evidence whatsoever that it's declining in popularity.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I think the biggest influences in increased baseball attendance, aside from expansion and bigger stadiums, are (1) the move to a 162-game season in 1961-62, which gave every team eight additional home dates each season, (2) the shift to nearly all games being played at night and (2) the extinction of the single-admission doubleheader. During the Game's postwar peak of popularity most teams scheduled all weekend games during the day, and a good number of weekday games, and most Sundays featured doubleheaders. Eliminating doubleheaders added, more or less, thirteen home dates to the schedule that weren't there before. And the increase in night games made the ballpark a family destination, instead of something lone fans would cut work to do when they had the chance.

As far as popularity goes, I don't hear the constant summertime buzz of the game the way I used to. Part of that's the dilution of our population by middle-class outastaters who weren't raised on the Sox the way we were, but another part of it is that young people, even if they're casual fans, don't obsess over it the way we did forty or fifty years ago. When they do go to the game, it's more of a social outing than anything else -- locally, this is known as "pinkhatting," and the people who go to games just to drink and goof around with cellphone cameras are called "pink hats," after the non-regulation novelty caps they tend to wear.

Now, there's nothing wrong with pinkhatting if that's what you like to do -- your hat might be pink, but as far as John Henry and Co. are concerned, your money's still green. But a lot of these types of fans are just in it for the trendiness -- for quite a while in the mid-2000s, Fenway was a "hip" place to be. But now the team stinks, attendance has dropped off from what it was in the good years -- although not to the rock bottom it hit just before 1967 -- and people just don't talk about the Sox the way they used to. It would have been inconceivable in the 1970s for football news to be above the fold in the Boston papers in August -- the Patriots were a dull joke, and they were basically just something to mark time with until the Celtics got going. Baseball *owned* summer in those days in a way it no longer does. There are just too many other things to grab the attention of the casual pinkhat fan, and not enough hard-core fans are coming up as kids to make up the difference.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I think the biggest influences in increased baseball attendance, aside from expansion and bigger stadiums, are (1) the move to a 162-game season in 1961-62, which gave every team eight additional home dates each season, (2) the shift to nearly all games being played at night and (2) the extinction of the single-admission doubleheader. During the Game's postwar peak of popularity most teams scheduled all weekend games during the day, and a good number of weekday games, and most Sundays featured doubleheaders. Eliminating doubleheaders added, more or less, thirteen home dates to the schedule that weren't there before. And the increase in night games made the ballpark a family destination, instead of something lone fans would cut work to do when they had the chance.

One of the epiphanies I had at Fenway Park was the realization that the park was build in a different time, for a different type of game experience. Back in the day, you got off the train or whathaveyou, walked into the park, sat down for a couple of hours then walked back out and went about your day. It was a 2-hour, mid-day distraction. These days, attending a game is an "event".

 

[LizzieMaine]

I had the converse experience when I used to go to Expos games in Montreal -- the game was like going to a circus, with all sorts of extraneous events going on, and most of the five or six thousand people in the place were there for the POM Shake Your Buns contest or the Labatt's T-Shirt Cannon. Hardly anybody was actually paying attention to the game.

 

[pawineguy]

I think the biggest influences in increased baseball attendance, aside from expansion and bigger stadiums, are (1) the move to a 162-game season in 1961-62, which gave every team eight additional home dates each season, (2) the shift to nearly all games being played at night and (2) the extinction of the single-admission doubleheader. During the Game's postwar peak of popularity most teams scheduled all weekend games during the day, and a good number of weekday games, and most Sundays featured doubleheaders. Eliminating doubleheaders added, more or less, thirteen home dates to the schedule that weren't there before. And the increase in night games made the ballpark a family destination, instead of something lone fans would cut work to do when they had the chance.

As far as popularity goes, I don't hear the constant summertime buzz of the game the way I used to. Part of that's the dilution of our population by middle-class outastaters who weren't raised on the Sox the way we were, but another part of it is that young people, even if they're casual fans, don't obsess over it the way we did forty or fifty years ago. When they do go to the game, it's more of a social outing than anything else -- locally, this is known as "pinkhatting," and the people who go to games just to drink and goof around with cellphone cameras are called "pink hats," after the non-regulation novelty caps they tend to wear.

Now, there's nothing wrong with pinkhatting if that's what you like to do -- your hat might be pink, but as far as John Henry and Co. are concerned, your money's still green. But a lot of these types of fans are just in it for the trendiness -- for quite a while in the mid-2000s, Fenway was a "hip" place to be. But now the team stinks, attendance has dropped off from what it was in the good years -- although not to the rock bottom it hit just before 1967 -- and people just don't talk about the Sox the way they used to. It would have been inconceivable in the 1970s for football news to be above the fold in the Boston papers in August -- the Patriots were a dull joke, and they were basically just something to mark time with until the Celtics got going. Baseball *owned* summer in those days in a way it no longer does. There are just too many other things to grab the attention of the casual pinkhat fan, and not enough hard-core fans are coming up as kids to make up the difference.

Don't get me started on sushi at ball games... Citizens Bank Park still gets a mad rush of people on dollar dog night, which is both heartening and disgusting in person.

And, I believe you meant to say 4 additional home games, from 77 to 81. Totally agree with all of your other points, the schedule has really been maximized for attendance.

 

[HudsonHawk]

I had the converse experience when I used to go to Expos games in Montreal -- the game was like going to a circus, with all sorts of extraneous events going on, and most of the five or six thousand people in the place were there for the POM Shake Your Buns contest or the Labatt's T-Shirt Cannon. Hardly anybody was actually paying attention to the game.

That's true at any professional sporting event. I think I saw more selfies being taken at Fenway than I have in the rest of my life combined.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Yep. Even at Fenway it's a very different experence from what it was 40 or 50 years ago. Usually when I go nowadays I'm the only one within sight who's keeping a scorecard.

Not that there weren't antics in those days, but they were spontaneous antics, not something arranged by the Boys. You might have Bill Lee standing in the bullpen holding his arms up like goalposts so fans could kick field goals with wadded up bubble gum. But only if the game wasn't tight.

 

[HudsonHawk]

Yep. Even at Fenway it's a very different experence from what it was 40 or 50 years ago. Usually when I go nowadays I'm the only one within sight who's keeping a scorecard.

I wanna slap people who say "isn't there a scorecard app?"

 

[Fading Fast]

One of the epiphanies I had at Fenway Park was the realization that the park was build in a different time, for a different type of game experience. Back in the day, you got off the train or whathaveyou, walked into the park, sat down for a couple of hours then walked back out and went about your day. It was a 2-hour, mid-day distraction. These days, attending a game is an "event".

+1, which is exactly what my girlfriend and I used to do in the late 1990s / early 2000s when we lived in Boston. We'd walk over to the stadium, buy tickets out front (for a not insane price for decent seats), watch the game and go home or on to whatever else we were doing that day. It was so great to have a true in-city ballpark that wasn't a big deal to get to. Also, the charm of the stadium overcame any lack-of-modern conveniences that so many people seem to care about.

Lizzie, go to it on the Olympics. That entire enterprise needs a complete redo.

 

[tonyb]

...

As far as popularity goes, I don't hear the constant summertime buzz of the game the way I used to. Part of that's the dilution of our population by middle-class outastaters who weren't raised on the Sox the way we were, but another part of it is that young people, even if they're casual fans, don't obsess over it the way we did forty or fifty years ago. ...

Yup. Anything's hold on the popular imagination is difficult to quantify. Still, amass enough anecdotes and you get something that's hard to dismiss.

I got a few years on you, but not enough for a real generational difference. Baseball was truly the national pastime when I was a kid. It permeated the culture in ways it just doesn't anymore. Those who never attended a big-league game, often on account of their living well removed from any major league city, could recite the lineup of their favorite team. Everyone knew who Sandy Koufax was, and Warren Spahn, and Willie Mays, and Hank Aaron, and Roger Maris, and Mickey Mantle, and ...

Baseball references came up in just about everyone's everyday speech. And everyone knew the basic rules of the game, such that some variation thereon could be played by any random collection of kids with something resembling a ball and something resembling a bat and four places to call bases.

Perhaps hockey in Canada still enjoys something of the status baseball once held in the States. Perhaps. Kids play street hockey up there with whatever equipment and playing surface they can construct from whatever might be readily at hand. And hockey news leads the sportscasts. Perhaps our brothers and sisters from the great frozen North can weigh in on this?

 

[Hercule]

I remain a Victor Borge fan. He was still quite active and vibrant in my younger years, but his fan base was a generation (or two) ahead of me. Turns out that he was a true virtuoso, a world-class player. Like Liberace, he brought longhair music to the masses, but that's where the similarities end. Borge's humor was of a whole 'nother variety. Saying which one was superior says more about me than the respective ivory tinklers, but know that I can handle maybe five minutes of Liberace until I've seen about all that his routine has to offer, while I can watch the entire Victor Borge special on PBS on Saturday nights, interrupted by the pleas for donations to your local station.

While I can appreciate Borge's humor and talent, I'm afraid I have a jaundiced view of him otherwise. Many many years ago I stage managed one of his concerts at a summer music festival. After the show there was a long line for autographs, so I dutifully stayed at the end of the line, seeing as I was the "help". Well when it came my turn he claimed his hand was tired and he left for his dressing room. So there's a brush with greatness for you.

 

[LizzieMaine]

I can still quote long snatches of his "Phonetic Punctuation" bit, and was surprised that a couple of the kids at work recognized it. Evidently someone was buying those "Best Of Victor Borge" VHS collections in the 90s.

 

[2jakes]

Baseball:

Mickey Mantle was just a rookie when I started developing an interest in baseball on the radio.
I remember his cards but it wasn’t until a little later that I realized what I had.
Babe Ruth was before my time but heard about him from dad & grandfather.
And with whatever pennies I could gather from the deposit of empty soda water glass bottles back to the store.
I would buy Topps baseball cards (1¢) which included a flat stick that resembled bubble-gum .

Words like collectible, mint condition, rare or PSA grading was foreign to me.

The same could be said for my comic books .

 

[tonyb]

While I can appreciate Borge's humor and talent, I'm afraid I have a jaundiced view of him otherwise. Many many years ago I stage managed one of his concerts at a summer music festival. After the show there was a long line for autographs, so I dutifully stayed at the end of the line, seeing as I was the "help". Well when it came my turn he claimed his hand was tired and he left for his dressing room. So there's a brush with greatness for you.

I can see how that might rub a person the wrong way.

 

[2jakes]

^^^

+1

 

[pawineguy]

I wanna slap people who say "isn't there a scorecard app?"

Since almost every youth team now uses those apps the scorebook is on its way towards total extinction. The company that we use has partnered with another technology company that translates stats into "articles" complete with headlines. They are not exactly well written, but the kids get a kick out of seeing the computer generated write ups of the game.

 

[LizzieMaine]

Half the fun of keeping a scorecard is making up your own system that only you can understand. "WW" for "Wasn't Watching."

 

[tonyb]

One of the epiphanies I had at Fenway Park was the realization that the park was build in a different time, for a different type of game experience. Back in the day, you got off the train or whathaveyou, walked into the park, sat down for a couple of hours then walked back out and went about your day. It was a 2-hour, mid-day distraction. These days, attending a game is an "event".

I was in Fenway back in -- what? -- early in the 20-aughts. Not only was it built "for a different time and a different game experience," it was also built for a different sized fan. Man, those old wooden seats were small.

These days the ballpark experience is very much about separating the attendee from his money. A person could easily spend 30 or 40 bucks on comestibles and not feel like he overate.

But I will say this for this new breed of "retro" ballparks that have sprung up over the past couple of decades: They are, for the most part (put down the pitchforks) superior to the facilities they replaced, seeing how most of the latter were those hideous one-size-fits-none multi-purpose stadia that went up in the 1960s and '70s. (And don't get me started on the domed facilities.) In most of these new parks the main concourses are open to the field, so that you can actually see the game while waiting in line for your eight-dollar hot dog. The sight lines are right for baseball, the restroom facilities are more plentiful and, best of all, they are made for baseball, and they look it and feel it.

I do indeed bemoan the loss of the ballparks those 1960s and '70s stadia replaced. The retro parks don't bring 'em back, but they beat the flying saucer stadia.

Dodger Stadium is now the third-oldest ballpark in the majors. And one of the few that isn't named for one corporate sponsor or another.