There is a low hum that bounces around a ballpark. It’s the collective conversations of thousands of people. And in one moment, one clutch run scored, one bad call, the hum erupts and the voices unite. This is baseball at its best. When goose bumps emerge because you’ve witnessed something great. When you’re swept away by the local emotion of a much-needed win. When the home team plays like a high school squad one night, only to pummel the same team the next. Some people say baseball is slowly fading from the American landscape. Soccer and lacrosse at the youth level and football and basketball at the professional level are replacing it. Ticket prices are driving people away. High-def televisions offer more angles to see the action, and the price of beer from the fridge is unbeatable. But visit Minneapolis or Milwaukee or Chicago and ask those 40,000 plus fans at each stadium if baseball is dying and the resounding roar is no. Not even close.
The stadiums
It’s all about the jumbotron, entertainment between innings, keeping the fans happy in those intermingling moments when the players are taking the field or running it in for an at bat. We’ve seen the Blue Bunny Ice Cream Scoop toss, the magical kiss cam (god forbid you go to a game with your sibling!), the muscle cam, guess the hat, races to the ballpark, t-shirt launchers, and more. There are more food options than a modern mall’s food court. Miller Park and Target Field have all the amenities of a First Class Airliner, but old Wrigley Field, wedged into the city like a sausage into its casing, does little more than offer up its players and the game to the fans. Funny enough, Cubs fans and those who visit the stadium don’t complain about the minimalist menu or the lack of instant replay or the difficulty in scoring a game when the line-up can be found nowhere. I have to wonder, are all of the games played in and around the baseball game needed? Is it all about making money on the owner’s part? All about sponsorship of each and every moment of the game? We’ll see …
The people
There really are only three kinds of fans at games: the die hards, the baseball lovers, and the “someone game me these tickets, so I had to come”. We fall into the second category, but it’s the combination of the first and second that really makes spectating at games interesting. So far, the die hards have been the heavy drinking, frequently yelling, tail gating folks who respond to every play, every demand from the jumbotron, every clap and cheer and yell. They feel they’ve given so much to the team that they deserve something in return. It need not be a win or a close game, rather the die hards want to see the magic that the perfectly manicured grass promises. It’s a charging play to the wall to catch a fly ball, an aggressive steal to get a runner in scoring position. Maybe it’s even a pitcher’s tip of the hat after a long slog against one too many batters. What happens when you mix the die-hard fan with the reluctant one? To me that’s where the real magic of baseball happens. In some cases, we’ve seen teaching take place (“Cheer for this guy and boo for that guy,” a die hard might instruct), but in most cases the die-hard can never truly understand the reluctant fan who shows up one, two, maybe three seconds after the first pitch, let alone those who show up in the fifth inning to claim their seats.
Dawn and Brian are two local Minnesotans who had never seen the Twins play in Minnesota before. They’ve seen the Twins on the road, but never, ever at home. They ponied up for some fabulous seats in the new stadium as a treat for all of their years of dedication. They are fans because “it’s what you do; it’s the team to root for.” Yet when I asked them how they became fans, they had no idea. Lots of die-hards have the same answer. Team loyalty seems to be passed on from parent to child, from spouse to spouse, from one die-hard to the next. I often have the same response when people ask me why I’m a Yankees fan. I just am. It’s the team my family rooted for and they’re the team of my childhood.
I met these other two guys on the L after the Cubs game and they too were on a little stadium pilgrimage. Their loop was a little smaller (White Sox, Brewers, Cubs), but they had a love for the game that extended beyond their loyalties to the Yankees and the Phillies. They wanted to see stadiums because they reflected the cities they were in, told a little story about each team. They were willing to drive long distances just to sit in the outfield seats of some never before seen stadium. They loved their teams, but they also loved the game. And at each stadium they decked themselves out in home team gear – hats, jerseys, foam fingers. They bounded off the L a stop before mine happy to have finally visited the old Wrigley, happy to have witnessed a rare Cubs win, dreaming of their next game, their next new stadium.
Bobbi and LouAnn work the Box Office at the Qwest Center/TD Ameritrade Stadium in Omaha. They are the gatekeepers for ticket information and sales related to the College World Series. And these two ladies couldn’t have been nicer. We stopped in Omaha on our way to Minneapolis just to scope out the city and to see if we could get tickets for the first game of the CWS. Pre-sale tickets are gone, but day of tickets will be available, and Bobbi and LouAnn did everything they could to try and get us some free tickets. “Teachers on a road trip to look at the history of baseball? There’s such a thing as Baseball Literature?” asked Bobbi. Yup! These two local ladies have been to the CWS for more than a decade and go “just because.” Just because they love watching those college players hustle. Just because any kind of baseball is better than no baseball at all. Bobbi was so gracious she was ready to offer us some of her own tickets, but when she realized we wanted to go to the Championship game, she tried to get some tickets out of her supervisor but with no luck. Here were these two ladies ready to give up some of their own tickets, willing to give us all the hot tips on how to procure our own tickets, welcoming us into their city and their big event just because we all loved the same game.
The game stats
Twins v Rangers — Rangers
Twins v Rangers — 8-1 Twins
Brewers v Cardinals — 4-3 Brewers
Cubs v Brewers — 1-0 Cubs
*Total baseball time: 10 hours 16 mins
*Innings seen: 32.5 (ok, we left at the bottom of the 7th on Friday night because of the rain and cold . We weren’t prepared)
*Homeruns: 1 (Milwaukee’s Prince Fielder)
*Total attendance: 161,089
*Things of note: Two proposals, 4 perfect innings (Twins’ Scott Baker), Sausage races, pickle play between 3rd and home, incredidog (hotdog with stadium sauce, onions, sauerkraut – made Jamie a little ill)
*Total miles driven: 1,452 (as of typing this on the road)
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