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March 29, 2006

2006--Setting the Stage

Put on a Happy Face

by Steven Goldman

SETTING THE STAGE: PUT ON A HAPPY FACE
(OR, WHY EVERYONE SHOULD BE A YANKEES FAN)

The Florida Marlins have proposed a great new fan incentive for the coming season. In the first inning of each game, between the second and third pitches by the home team, every fan will be gently stabbed with a cocktail fork, left thigh for season ticket holders, right thigh for single game ticket holders. The marketing department anticipates a great response from the masochists who are expected to be the main attendees at Marlins games this year. In addition, the singing of the national anthem will be replaced by dramatic readings of David Samson’s, “We’re moving to anyplace but here and it’s all your fault, you ungrateful bastards,” speech by local celebrities.

Halfway across the country, the Royals have done the Marlins one better. Each night, when fans rise for the seventh inning stretch, large, rotating blades will descend and decapitate every fan of adult height. The resulting blood, viscera, and other remains will be collected and used to feed orphaned dogs rescued from abusive puppy farms. The Royals are hopeful that their spin on Major League Baseball’s “I Live For This” campaign, “I Die For This,” will kindle more enthusiasm than did last season’s slogan, “Abandon Hope All Ye Who Enter Here.” Special promotions such as “Great Gay Entertainers Bobble-Head Night,” “Premenstrual Ladies Day,” and “Americans Who Love Lobbyists Night” are expected to nearly double last season’s per game attendance of 17.

Baseball is an entertainment. Unlike food, clothing, and shelter, entertainment is optional. As Hollywood has found recently, even when they offer such compelling fare as “Deadly Round Things: The Ring vs. Saw,” or perhaps because of it, the theatres stay empty. Gas has become very expensive while boorish behavior comes cheap. It’s more cost-efficient, not to mention infinitely more rewarding, to remain on the couch and practice one’s reproductive technique. No one is going to be a buzzkill with incessant talking, unless you’re into that kind of thing. You won’t be subjected to commercials or overpriced popcorn or the Future Juvie Offenders of America hacking at the seats with their box cutters and mocking Richard III for his disfiguring hump. Or you for yours. A man’s hump is his castle.

This applies to baseball teams in the same way that it applies to Hollywood. Baseball teams put on a show for the amusement of the customers. That’s it. They provide no essential service, create only a few low paying jobs beyond those of the executives and the players, and their stadiums generate an inefficient return on the land that they use. If the teams choose not to entertain, as the Marlins and Royals have surely done, they forfeit their relevance, giving up any claim for public attention or dollars. One can safely stay home, do a Dwight Eisenhower and take up paint-by-numbers, or read Zane Grey novels.

At our recent event at the Yogi Berra Museum, we were asked, "When will the Royals fire Allard Baird?" Assuming the questioner bore Mr. Baird no personal animus--we will assume that young Allard did not run off with the fellow’s mother or eat his cat--the question can be paraphrased as, "When will the Royals get better?” The answer, at least from this corner, was, "When Royals ownership cares about winning again." This too can be paraphrased as, "When they care about earning your money," which is to say, "When they again care to be entertaining." Until that time they can be safely ignored, or even disdained. They don’t care to provide the fan with a bang for his buck, to give them what they’re paying for, which is a true athletic contest. If that last part, the contest, wasn’t important, if all it took to bring satisfaction was a visit by the Yankees, then we would eagerly eschew the games themselves and the pennant races and just watch batting practice. No, the game is the thing.