Michel;

Professional sports are a form of business. Businesses do as they please and if they make a profit so much the better. Perhaps a move to a new location or declare bankruptcy is the order of the day. The owners express his/her personalities and the players are another story!

The problem with being a fan is you build loyalty for one team. There in lies the mistake. You are attempting to be loyal to a business, which could care less about you.

In San Francisco, they built a new stadium. The idiot on television has said since the new stadium opened, “Do no even attempt to buy a ticket as they are sold out for the year”! The new stadium has 40,000 some seats compared to Candlestick Park, which had over 60,000 seats. Guess what? It costs $32 for a lower box seat! $128 for tickets for a family of four and add another $60 for a drink and sandwich. That is a huge increase over the price of a ticket at Candlestick Park!

Baseball is far from the “National Pass Time”. When I was a kid we had a great triple AAA team – “The San Francisco Seals”. Guys like Joe DiMaggio played for the Seals. As kids we went to ball games for 20 cents as members of “The Christopher Milk Club”. Today you pay your $32 dollars. Our “National Pass Time” is a “National Disgrace”.

Baseball is no longer for the fans. It is for the owners, players and advertisers. We are an incidental object – that is we just pay the bills. I guess the problem is we expected things to continue as they were years ago. As long as we pay the bills things will go as they will.

Other professional sports offerings are in the same boat in one way or another as is baseball. Perhaps a child has expectations and realizations about sports that they remember and expect as adults. When an adults attitude changes due to experiences, responsibilities and life style, feelings towards things like sports change. Couple that with the changes professional sports have taken during the last 25 years, and you have many questions. Why do we even bother with professional sports? Is it far distant from the Roman Coliseum? Keep the citizens amused while the real problems are shoved under the rug.

Tom