>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!
Montreal has been in an undecided situation about their future since 10 years. But, they're still there.
>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.
Well, it was working well since 1994. What frustrated a lot of people is that nothing was much done to resolve the strike issue on that year as oppose to what was done this year (which resolved it even before it started) because they could have ended up in a Canadian only teams World Series (or least the Expos where nobody wanted to see them winning), as per a lot of people are saying here. After having backed them up for years in the venue of having a good team, all those years went down in a split of a second because of that situation. When they resolved it, nothing was done to keep the low markets in effect and they started to sell the players across the majors. Which is different this year as they agreed to keep the low market teams intact until 2006.
So, suddendly, players like Pedro Martinez, Larry Walker and a lot of other well known names found themselves a new home. They have dominated the majors in their respective areas since or for a while after that. So, having had received some good attention, such as this year when they resolved the issue, would have changed a lot of things. Keeping such a good team intact would have brought something faster than expected and we would have kept a higher average of attendance for those years.
>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!
Yes, the make them smaller and they increase tickets. I agree that this is not necessary good.
>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.
In overall, one key of this situation is the salaries given to players. The latest quarter billion contract done last year is one of the examples to show that things don't make sense anymore in that area. The same is true for a lot of players where even the minimum salary, which was increased when the potential strike was resolved this year, has increased to a level which would make them millionnaires in 3 years approx.
