A Minor Infatuation Major League Attendance Down, But Fans Still Love The Farms
Major-League Baseball’s All-Star Game tonight at Arlington, Texas, serves as an ideal time for introspection as to the state of the sport.
The season is (generally) halfway completed. Is there much to recommend the second half?
Cleveland Indians fans would certainly say yes. Followers of Hideo Nomo, Greg Maddux and Tony Gwynn would second the motion.
Yet the ascendancy of the once-woeful Indians is not the major story of the 1995 season. Neither is the Koufax-like dominance of Maddux.
What sets this year apart is that every fifth major league baseball fan doesn’t seem to care.
Big-league attendance is down anywhere from 19 to 23 percent. Last year’s strike, which canceled the World Series, has incited enough anger to keep one-fifth of the usual fans away from the 28 stadiums.
Although acting commissioner Bud Selig pretends to be unperturbed, the fan revolt could signal something worse: the end of America’s love affair with baseball.
If statistics are trustworthy, however, baseball fans are saying one thing to major league players and another to players in the minors.
To the big-leaguers: Repent now. To the professionals in other leagues: Keep it up.
The minor leagues set an attendance record of 33 million last year. Despite the crippling strike, this year’s minor league numbers are similar to the record pace. At worst, the minors are off 3-5 percent.
The Spokane Indians set a pergame attendance record of 4,219 last year. This season the Indians are a couple of hundred off that pace.
The reason for the slight decrease, reports Indians general manager Andy Billig, has everything to do with the weather and nothing to do with the big-league strike.
Spokane was blessed with perfect weather last year and packed the stands despite a last-place team. The ‘95 Indians are also in last place, but have played through 50-degree nights and rainstorms.
Billig said he’s heard no complaints from Indians fans about the work stoppage. People come to Seafirst Stadium, Billig said, to enjoy the weather and promotions, and see baseball at its purest level.
Indians fans seem to concur.
“I come out here because this is one of the last resorts,” said Ed Muench, 62, who lives near Cheney. “I saw some of these kids play in Omaha (Neb.) at the College World Series. … That’s the best baseball there is.”
Muench and his family are regular Indians and Spokane Chiefs hockey fans. A former resident of New Jersey, Muench saw plenty of New York Yankees and Mets games in his day.
“But I’m no longer a fan of the major leagues because of the strike,” he said.
Muench’s son Brian, who played college baseball at Creighton University, typically travels to Kansas City once a year with his buddies to watch the Royals. This year the pals went to K.C. to play golf.
“I hope the players and the owners get it stuck to them real well,” Ed Muench said.
Lee Dupont, a self-described “baseball nut,” is more forgiving. The Coeur d’Alene resident said the strike may have hurt baseball but it didn’t ruin his interest in the game.
Dupont, 56, attends three or so Indians games per year, maybe more now that his son John has taken up the sport. Dupont chooses games according to what team’s in town - first-place Bellingham last week - or who’s in town. The Duponts are proud of photos taken last year when George Brett attended an Indians game when the Royals were affiliated with the Eugene Emeralds.
Weather doesn’t affect the Duponts’ viewing habits - “The players are the ones who have to face that” - and neither does the caliber of play.
“The Indians are up and down, just like anyone else,” Dupont said.
Mary Burrowes has seen championship teams and basement dwellers during her seven seasons at the Spokane ballpark. Burrowes, who’s in her “upper 50s,” grew fond of baseball when her son played high school ball.
She’s a minor league fan who would, for curiosity’s sake, attend a major league game if she happened to be in a big city at the right time. Burrowes has missed just one Indians game this year, sitting through two downpours and more hometeam losses than wins.
“A busy schedule could keep me away, but it would have to be very busy,” Burrowes said.
East Valley grad Jim DeFrancesco, 34, would also tag along to a major league game if asked, but has soured slightly on the game.
DeFrancesco recalls the excitement of following the Indians during their Triple-A days as a Los Angeles Dodgers farm team. Now he scans the newspaper to see how Gwynn did the night before, but cares little beyond that.
He does, however, try to attend at least five Indians games per year.
“It’s better when they win,” he said, “but that isn’t the reason I come. It’s just the atmosphere.”
“I just enjoy being outside and seeing the baseball,” agrees Dan Adkins, 42, of Cheney.
Adkins, who saw his first Spokane game of the year last Thursday, would like to follow a big-time team but understands that “this is all we have.
“I don’t even know why (bigleaguers) struck, really,” Adkins said. “But it doesn’t bother me at all.”
, DataTimes ILLUSTRATION: Color Photo