alt Hacker NewsIronically, anyone who lives in a state with major league sports is pouring beaucoup tax dollars into supporting them. The enormous tax breaks and bonds sold and deals made to establish and build stadiums, attract franchises, and keep them happy enough not to move on. It's staggering.
There are two annual baseball events that I have usually attended in past years. I think Imma skip both of them this year. I have not enjoyed live baseball games in my adulthood. They are a circus of peak capitalist greed, centered around selling merch, cheap booze, terrible food, cheap liquor, gambling, and awful beer. Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.
I cannot seem to enjoy myself in the stands. Most other people are appallingly rude and don't care if I'm bothered by them. I went to a Spring Training game one time and I swear that I was somehow targeted by frat boys, who were so obnoxious that the family next to me just moved to another section entirely.
My dad loves baseball. His Baseball Superfan spend is $0 or near it. He hasn't attended a live game since the 1980s, but he watches it all on TV. He simply isn't interested in merch or memorabilia or any of that marketing around it. He simply loves the game in its purity.
Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.
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> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun.
I've been a baseball fan for years, and I've always hated that attitude. Bob Costas and other purists always talk about the "sanctity of the game" - it's a bunch of BS. First of all the game was never the "pure" or "holy" activity that people make it out to be. The history of the game is full of racism, sexism, drugs, womanizing, greed and so on. Not trying to be a hater, just telling facts. The game's purists like to look at history with rose colored glasses.
And as far as the fans, I wish the fans would be more passionate about the game. I've been to games in other countries - Mexico, Taiwan, Japan, and it's awesome. I'd rather have rowdy fans than people falling asleep: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=1FDrcWTSczs . I mean, come on, that's a Yankees/Red Sox game, one of the biggest rivalries in sports, and the dude is asleep?! No thanks. Give me the screamers and the drunks.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players
Wait, when was this?
I mean, Babe Ruth was infamous for drinking and womanizing.
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> Everyone who stays for at least 7 innings is staggering out, drunk as a skunk. Whether I ride the train home or I get on the roads, I'm positively surrounded by drunk zombie people. Woe betide us if the home team didn't win.
Good Lord, what games have you been going to? I see a couple MLB games live every year and a few minor league games. I haven't seen anything like what you're describing. That doesn't mean there are no drunks or obnoxious fans, but that's the risk of doing something in public. The last game I saw live was San Francisco at Milwaukee in June. Giants won 1-0, and the home team crowd was fine. And I mean the Brewers fans like their beer, but in no way was it a zombie apocalypse. Last game I saw in Oracle Park last year was also fine. Even Boston a few years ago, which definitely has more of a college town vibe than SF or Milwaukee, was hardly zombie land.
I'll also say that AAA ball is typically awesome. The games are much cheaper than the big leagues, you get to see some big league talent rehabbing from time to time and see the occasional prospect who gets called up. They also tend to be very family friendly.
> Baseball has been a game of moral fiber, respectable players, and good clean fun. But it seems that activists and jerks set out to ruin the experience for people like me. I'm not having it. I'd have way more fun at a punk rock women's roller derby bout.
I don't know about that. Baseball has a certain level of honor, sometimes an excessive amount e.g. some of the "code" that has started to fade away the last decade or so. It also invented the concept of a nearly all-powerful commissioner, which was created specifically because players threw a World Series for a payout. It's a wonderful game, a thinking person's game, but it's always been quintessentially American for both good and ill ever since it scaled nationwide during the Civil War.