When I was younger I genuinely loved the game of baseball, especially Toronto Blue Jays baseball. All winter I would pine for the start of spring training and opening day was often one of the best days of my year. The Jesse Barfield, Lloyd Moseby, George Bell outfield will always have a special place in my heart. Almost every Saturday for $2 as a Junior Jay I'd be in the outfield grandstand at Exhibition Stadium cheering on my team.
However as I aged, my interest in baseball began to fade. It's not that the team let me down, in fact they won two World Series as I was drifting away. Rather I was the one changing, seduced by the internet into an accelerated lifestyle that had little patience for a pastime like baseball that felt more dragged out and boring every time I tried to re-engage.
Since those two championships the Jays in general have lost the love and passion that this city once gave them, which is not to say they don't have a loyal fan base, but rather it cannot offer the size and momentum that inter-division rivals in New York and Boston can produce. While it's easy to focus on money and payroll as the secret to a team's success, the true source are the fans.
Recently a newspaper columnist from Chicago wrote that baseball in Toronto is dead, a remark made partly out of spite, but also after covering the White Sox play a series against the Jays, a series played to a handful of fans in a largely empty Rogers Centre. While some rushed to Toronto's defense, there's clearly something wrong when the stadium is as empty as it has been for the past few years.
Blue Jays (and Rogers) management counter with the argument that the team has to play well to earn the support of fans, however the players also require the support of fans in order to be motivated to play well. It strikes me that perhaps the solution is not just spending money but also spending social capital? For example let's look to the internet for a business model the team could learn from.
What if the Blue Jays were to adopt a freemium model? For the rest of the season, make all seats on the 500 level free, for all games. First come, first serve. Then allow all other seats to be sold on an auction basis, allowing seat holders to resell their seats if they become more valuable than when they were first bought.
If you can't fill the stadium for each game using that system, then yes, Baseball is dead in Toronto.
However I think that by making the games fun again, by making them a place people want to go, that they can go, it would give the players motivation to perform and excel.
The problem with baseball, is a similar problem that businesses face across industries. Whether they want to admit it or not they are competing with the internet, someway, somehow.
For me it was an issue of attention, that in this case can only be solved culturally, with economics coming second. By adding a freemium model to baseball, you could culturally change the vibe in the stadium, and therefore increase the appeal and value of the overall experience. You adopt and appropriate a little bit of the internet to upgrade an old pastime to something that preseves the game while expanding the potential audience/market.
A Grand Slam Rant
I used to really love baseball. I watched almost every Jays game and enjoyed Les Expos too. (Who dat?) In it's final season, I was at Exhibition Stadium as often as I was in class. But despite my former love, I haven't watched a single inning in about 15 years. Why? The league made several unnecessary and annoying changes that completely ruined my enjoyment of the game. I doubt ANYTHING could win me back.
Baseball is as much a lifestyle as it is a sport. They call them baseball parks for a reason. Essentially, baseball grew out of community picnics. Baseball was something to do/watch between beer, hot dogs and chit chats with friends and family. Professional baseball was ultimately little more than letting skilled players play the game for you and providing seats in exchange for pocket change. That was baseball's social contract. In this way, Jesse's suggestion of making sections of Skydome free is a return to baseball's roots and isn't nearly as silly as it sounds.
Tradition is more important to baseball than any other sport. Baseball went wrong when it decided to break from it. Artificial turf, sweat suit uniforms and domed stadiums were among the first wave of changes. While minor infractions, they felt cheap. It was the next wave of changes that were problematic.
In an attempt to make more money by trying to turn themselves into something they could never be (exciting), Major League Baseball demonstrated a complete misunderstanding of their own product and its appeal. Baseball is called "The National Pastime" for a reason. While punctuated with sparks of excitement, baseball just isn't capable of being exciting for longer than that. Baseball isn't rock n' roll, its jazz. It isn't a sugary caffeine drink, it's a Hot Toddie. With the pace of life constantly increasing, baseball was a soothing constant, barely changing in a century. But instead of embracing their identity, it became seen as a "weakness" in the chase for more profit. They wanted to compete with more exciting sports. They sought to makeover a picnic pastime into an EXTREEEEEME Sport when baseball is actually a natural ANTIDOTE to extreme.
Realizing that making baseball exciting would make it completely unrecognizable to fans, the league decided to focus on one aspect of the game they thought would sell, the home run. Fences were brought in to turn what used to be fly outs into home runs. While home run derbies attracted interest, the home run began high-jacking the game, diminishing the strategic elements (bunts, sac flies, steals) that serious fans love. It tended to reduce the game to "throw and smash". In a way, baseball was actually made more boring by oversimplifying it.
The importance of steroids in this new era CAN'T be understated. In a sport where Babe Ruth, Kirby Puckett, Cecil Fielder and Fernando Valenzuela were quite literally "huge stars", baseball players were encouraged to turn themselves into professional wrestlers by taking ILLEGAL drugs. Every team was riddled with steroid and Human Growth Hormone takers. The league liked steroids because it assisted with their home run agenda. They also like it because the muscles made players look more like elite athletes who deserved ludicrous salaries and less like the ordinary Joe who bought the tickets. Ordinary does not encourage you to empty your pockets and that's what they wanted.
The other aspect that drove me from the game was the off-field garbage. The obscene salaries, the almost constant threat of strikes/lockouts, the abuse (and vacancy) of the Commissioner position all left foul tastes in my mouth. Owners were found guilty of collusion. Everybody knew players were on the juice and nobody did or said anything. Apparently, baseball has flirted with instant replay, which could slow this slow sport down even more, turning every other pitch into a court case. Hell, rumours floated about allowing metal bats to generate more homers. In short, tradition, player's health, fan loyalty, the purity of the game and even the law all became expendable to the league. The social contract had been broken.
But if I had to chose, this was the defining moment for me.
http://news.google.com/newspapers?nid=1290&dat=19940610&id=argzAAAAIBAJ&...
I hate ads at sports venues. It (and corporately named stadiums) literally sells out fans to the highest bidder. It's a crass move and it feels like being cheated on by your girlfriend with the first guy who flashes her some cash.
It was a one-two punch. First, there was the insult. Baseball was no longer special. They were just in it for the quick buck and didn't care if they insulted my intelligence to do it. They might as well come to my house, whack me in the face with the advertiser's billboard and expect me to buy that product. Is that what little they thought of me?
Second, and more damaging for baseball, it drew my attention to the fact that very little of interest was happening. In other sports, you can try to ignore the ads or they quickly pop in and out camera range as the action unfolds. Putting an ad behind home plate guaranteed that I would spend 3/4 of a game staring right at an ad because nothing else was happening besides players spitting or adjusting their crotches. Just like looking behind the scenes at Disney, advertising completely killed the fantasy. In the end, the fantasy was all baseball really had going for it all along.
Eventually, all these things added up to me not being able to enjoy watching baseball anymore. I took just one too many slaps in the face. While most sports of guilty of the same crimes, the nature of baseball made the impact of each offence worse. If baseball had been smart, they would have embraced the tradition, encouraged the purists by keeping themselves pure and collected the growing numbers of people who drifted away from sports because they're fed up with the bullshit they have to swallow to watch them.
I missed baseball at first, but I no longer even notice it exists. In all honesty, other than the steroid scandals, this post is the first thought I've given to baseball in 10 years.
bad business
last year the pricing scheme for the jays was adjusted for the marquee visiting teams. so going to see the red sox or yankees cost something ridiculous like 50% above the standard ticket price. i attended a couple of these games and the jays lost them both.
why ding fans more for games the team isn't up to winning? terrible practice.
i haven't looked to see if that policy is back this year. what a joke!
when you have trouble gettin 20k people into the stadium a radical scheme like jesse's is a generous and interesting scheme.
Moderation and Trolls
Hey Adam, I hear what you're saying. However I think that kind of behaviour is a problem regardless. As I use this internet analogy, than so to must it come with internet problems. So the 500 level would need an anti-troll policy, a kind of moderation, to ensure that it was family friendly, at least certain parts of it. I see that as a good problem to tackle, especially if it brings new fans. Otherwise you get what we get which is an empty stadium that when it does fill up brings a culture that most fans do not desire. So how do we use free to build a better culture?
Obviously doubling the price
Obviously doubling the price isn't actually the solution but the culture around baseball in Toronto has changed significantly over the past few years. I struggle to explain why but given its recent emergence, the hooliganism is not linked to the success of the team on the field.
I wonder what role excessive product placement/marketing has played. Could it be making people feel less like they're part of a community and more entitled to do as they please?
Ads and Marketing Foster Discontent
In a word, "yes".
Little destroys a sense of community like advertising (and surveillance cameras, but that's another topic). It destroys the sense of common purpose, one of the most subconsciously appealing aspects of sports. Once you break that social contract, everyone starts being in it for themselves.
The owners stop seeing you as the reason the team exists, or even as a valued customer, but as a way of making as much money as possible by any means necessary. This includes constantly inventing ways to foist more ads on you, playing games with ticket pricing and any number of douche moves designed to wring every last penny out of you.
Meanwhile, fans become more fickle. On some level, they are aware they're being used, so they demand much more in return. The more they've been used and the more they've paid out, the more they expect in return. The most obvious place is in the victory column. Today, almost any team that doesn't win consistently will play in an empty stadium. But fans are also more apt to boo, complain and act up because they know the team has both used them and failed to meet their needs.
In addition, the endless marketing hype (ie "This year we will win it all." or "This player will be the league MVP.") creates unrealistic expectations which, when unmet, increases the level of dissatisfaction.
Whatever happened to "We'll treat you with respect and try our best every night."?
Interesting idea but after
Interesting idea but after sitting through the belligerence of drunken, disinterested and aggressive fans in the 500 level on Opening Day, I'm convinced that doubling the price of the game would improve the experience. Also, when the Jays did do the Toonie Tuesday promotion a couple years ago, it attracted that same drunk, disinterested and aggressive demographic. As a die hard baseball fan, I'd rather lose the team than rely on that subset of the population to keep the Jays alive.
Seriously?
Really now? I call your bluff. Have you been to ANY other sporting event? Football, Hockey, and most especially Soccer? Sporting events are where the male testosterone thrives, regardless if they are paying double for it or not.
You aren't a real fan if you would rather lose the invaluable opportunity to have your children and family watch a sport live, than put up with a few drunks. Funny, I see to always manage to avoid or ignore them just fine.
Then again, since I actually am a fan, I shell out more than $9 and sit in the 100 levels.
I call Bullshit. You must be a leafs fan.
What?
I was following along with your response just fine until your last line "Then again, since I actually am a fan, I shell out more than $9 and sit in the 100 levels."
That was a bit elitist. How does that make you more of a fan than anyone who would opt to go to a Jays game for free or for $2? Paying more for sporting events is not a demonstration of true fan-dom - And it does not make you better than people who DID pay $9 for a ticket in the 500 level. If you do actually think that, well then you are a sad victim of the marketing machine that is yet another one of Toronto's shitty sports franchises. As someone who sat in the 100 level two weeks ago, I can attest that the Blue Jays are not any better when closer - they were lacklustre and unenthused throughout.
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