The Death of Baseball

Sports

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the

DEATH OF baseball

By Hunter Gambino Gavel Media Contributor

Speckles of chipped paint and rusty metal flakes sprinkled on top of my head as I walked underneath the raised MTA 7-train subway track toward Citi Field, the home of the New York Mets. The smell of popcorn and hot dogs filled the air surrounding the stadium. It wasn’t until a familiar musty smell tingled my senses that it felt real.

Baseball was back, and I already searched for a ten or twenty dollar bill in my pocket without even stepping through the brick arches and catching a glimpse of the players donning the jerseys I grew up admiring.

The “Amazin’s” were finally at it again, this time against fellow fourth place finisher, the San Diego Padres. The Queens stadium buzzed outside with jittery anticipation as the subway cars shakily cascaded away toward NYC. For miles around, traffic crept slowly, with the many sponsor symbols visible from every highway, subway platform, and sidewalk. Hoards of paying fans roamed, converging on the ticket gates from every direction. With tickets in hand and ties around necks, the mass fun46

neled into the stadium for the start of another season of Mets baseball.

Walking through the dark creamcolored “Jackie Robinson Rotunda,” just inside the center field gates, spectators get bombarded with sentimental images of former Mets players and a photographic documentation of the life of Brooklyn Dodgers hall of famer, Jackie Robinson. Greasy squadrons of people—stud earrings and all— are gathered in front of the several story escalators leading into the monstrous stadium, awaiting others and snapping dozens of photos of the gaudy atrium.

The Mets announced a sell out crowd of 41,053 for their third opening day at Citi Field, but by the third inning, the crowds didn’t look even half of that. Thousands paraded through the tunnels, bouncing from concession stand to concession stand, ignorant of the happenings of the professional baseball game that they paid handsomely to attend.

Empty seats and buffoonery were rampant, but no one seemed to care because all needs seemed to be satisfied.

AND WHY I WANTED SOMEONE TO TAKE ME OUT OF THE BALLGAME.

Or so everyone would think.

Looking around, I saw more neck ties on adults catering to business clients then baseball mitts on kneehigh fans. I smelled too much cologne. I saw too many iPhones being scrolled through and tapped on. I saw women chatting over a glass of wine.

This seemed to me like a far cry from what I remember as a day out at the ball game as a kid, glove under arm and a raggedy old jersey on my back.

I felt like I was in the middle of a reptile zoo, and some genius was giving these beasts booze.

Waiting for an hour and a half in the line for Shake Shack seemed, at the time, like watching a dog get old, until I pounded two double burgers—dripping with melted magical sauce and cheddar cheese—and had a brief hallucination of billowy clouds surrounding me and beautiful angels singing music that made the hair on the back of my neck stand up. That moment at the start of the fifth inning, as the Mets took the field, made me realize that that is exactly what every executive involved with the organization wants me to feel. It was no longer

May 2013 May 2013

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about the burger, the sweet sauce of unknown ingredients, the players, the team or fifty years of America’s pastime embodied by the boys in white, orange and blue; it became about the experience. My experience.

There was a brilliant time, called the 1990’s, when people actually had money and spent it, a whole lot of it. So executives had this idea that they could make a hell of a payday off these people. Thus came the big market stadium. In the span of five years, over ten contracts were signed by major league teams to undertake massive renovations or the construction of an entirely new stadium. For example, both the New York Mets and Yankees simultaneously erected equally grandiose structures. By making the stadiums bigger and jacking up prices on every possible accessory and logo-labeled souvenir, the ball clubs saw exponential growths in revenues. However, the successes were short lived. Likely in response to the economic crisis of the past decade, average attendance has dropped significantly, as ticket prices have continued to soar.

Maybe in time the economy will revamp and this lifestyle of mass consumption at exorbitant rates can be sustained. Or there will be, like, an ice age or something.

I sat there, in my cushiony seat—in

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front of the four men in full business attire, holding wads of cash and betting and exchanging bills over every next on-field possibility—intently observing the game. Walking anywhere was out of the question; even leaning forward forced excruciating pressure on my expanded gut, which was having trouble digesting. Plus, I couldn’t leave my $9 beer unattended) without the beverage being filled 2 inches deep with pencil-shaving-esque peanut shells. The splinters of once wholesome, salted nuts, sold for $7.50 a bag—no student discount available—were in all likelihood smashed in the meaty palms of an inebriated father pretending his son

“There was a showing of the Mets own “Harlem Shake” video on the sponsor-strewn megatron. I just looked away.” wasn’t watching High School Musical on his smartphone, at the ball game, up in the mezzanine level.

There they lay, awaiting the warm winds on the gum-studded floors of concrete to be whisked away to dance amongst the sweet hot dog-smelling air, and directly into my only balancing medium in this, well, place.

There was a showing of the Mets own “Harlem Shake” video on the sponsor-strewn megatron. I just

looked away.

Something I couldn’t get over was the copious amount of garbage swirling through the air, and taking refuge in the outfield grass amongst the Mets players. Gusts of wind entered the stadium through its open walls in the outfield, picking up Cracker Jack bags, hot dog wraps, and napkins and distributing them in a peppering fashion throughout the expanse of grass and dirt and professional, ball-playing individuals. All this rubbish made me see that no matter the sponsors, the additives, the services—the façade that is projected can never hide what’s really produced at what used to be a place for America’s past time.

I’m in the vortex of the American Dream. This is everything we have set up and craved in this country, this assembly line that breaks down the contents of your wallet rather then building a constructive product, all while keeping you helplessly inebriated by the sense of utter entertainment.

There are a whole lot of others in the same boat, just as helpless, walking between concession stands selling filet mignon and fine wines, hot dogs and flat beer, ice cream and sugary sodas. The business side does research on us wandering, bovine folk. They know what we want, or maybe don’t want, but will buy anyway.

Oh yeah, the Mets won, 11-2 or something.

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