Never trust headlines. The most egregious “tease” I’ve come across in the past week was a New York Times story by the well-traveled sportswriter Joon Lee (ESPN, Washington Post, Bleacher Report, YouTube, Yahoo Sports, etc., a lot for a fellow born in 1995), headlined “$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now.”
I’m a sports fan (although almost exclusively baseball) and don’t spend anything close to that number, so I took the bait, and found this paragraph near the end of the article: “In 2004, a hard-core Boston fan would have spent around $1,321 to follow her or his favorite team—that included tickets, TV access and merchandise. Today, that number is $4,785. That’s a 262 percent jump. Wages, in that same stretch, have risen 87 percent.”
My guess is that Times editors don’t care much about sports, since Joon’s article is mostly about TV “streaming wars” that nickel-and-dime consumers, and nothing about purchasing tickets and merchandise (what about dogs, beers and peanuts?) and isn’t specifically about Boston, where the author grew up. Joon’s a freelance writer, so it makes sense he’s loaded up on TV subscriptions (the cost can be applied to his taxes), which run, he says, $2634 annually, plus some oddball charges when games are blacked out.
He continues: “For most of my life, sports was one of the most accessible forms of entertainment in America. You turned on the TV, flipped to the game and cheered or booed—with your family, your neighborhood, your city. Being a fan was simple. It was community.”
It’s still “simple” to be a fan. The other day I was having mid-morning coffee here in Baltimore with my friend Jim Burger, and during the two-hour give-and-take, the Orioles’ disappointing performance this year was addressed for 15 minutes or so. Jim watches the O’s on MASN and is a frequent spectator at the team’s still-magnificent Camden Yards.
Every year I pay Comcast for access to MLB Extra Innings, a package that allows a consumer to choose from every baseball game played on a given day. The charge in 2025: $149.99. If the Red Sox are playing Baltimore, I lose access to the team’s NESN station, and watch on MASN. It’s a wrinkle, but a small one. I also take Amazon Prime, Apple + and Peacock, where occasionally games are shifted to, but that aside, it’s never been easier for a fan to follow their team of choice.
When I was growing up, I was luckier than most since we received WPIX (Yankees) and WOR (Mets) and NBC’s Game of the Week. And since we lived near the Long Island Sound, my transistor could pick up the Red Sox radio broadcasts (crackly, although I heard the thwack when Boston’s Tony Conigliaro was beaned on Aug. 18, 1967, on a clear night. But that was it. On TV, the only occasion to see other teams was when they were playing the Yanks or Mets. And the World Series games were played in the afternoon, when school was still in session, requiring purloined radios. (On occasion, a male teacher—always male—had the game on, and that was the day’s instruction.)
In an attempt to add credence to a very shaky story, Joon spoke to Christine Reay, general manager of a bar in Clive, Iowa, who complains (with justification for lost revenue) that sometimes sports contests are unavailable because of streaming and blackout rules. Joon: “What she’s mourning isn’t just the game, or the lost business. It’s the feeling that games brought people together—that even in a fractured country, sports gave her bar a pulse.”
I’m not sure, or care, what Joon’s politics are, but wouldn’t be surprised if a Times editor (or AI bot) inserted that exaggerated “fractured country” bit. He adds that men (and women) from the private equity sector have purchased minority or controlling interests in sports teams. I doubt Mets fans are displeased that Steve Cohen is spending money on players. And, on cue: Joon writes, “As the old way of doing business fell away, the rich teams were getting richer while the rest were threatened with being left behind.” Not so dissimilar from the 1950s, when the wealthy Yankees were in the World Series eight years, and used the Kansas City Athletics as their de facto AAA team.
Attendance at MLB games today dwarfs the totals from 1995, when Joon was born, and the stadiums are far more accommodating than “the old days,” if more expensive.
And fans still talk ball, online and in person. Baseball blogger/#NeverTrumper Craig Calcaterra wrote on June 19th: “People say that Bluesky doesn't have a lot of baseball chatter during ballgames but my feed was nothing but a stream of epithets for Volpe by Yankees fans for a minute or two there. Almost reminded me of the good old days on Weimar Twitter.”
The picture above is of my son Nicky at a family outing to Camden Yards, in a season when the Orioles were unexpectedly great.
Take a look at the clues to figure out the year: John Boehner was Speaker of the House; Greg Maddux, Tom Glavine and Frank Thomas are elected to MLB’s Hall of Fame; The Lego Movie is released; The Tonight Show moves to New York after 42 years in Los Angeles; Cate Blanchett wins Best Actress Oscar; Bubba Watson wins the Masters Tournament; Illinois’ same-sex marriage law goes into effect; House Majority Whip Eric Cantor loses primary in Virginia; Indie Gardner is born and Ann B. Davis dies; and Roxane Gay’s Bad Feminist is published.
—Follow Russ Smith on Twitter: @MUGGER2023