Fans To Sports Magnates: Stop Pushing Us Around

Soon, now that school is out and the evenings are warming and the league standings are taking shape, the fans may return to the major league baseball parks. Their work is done for the time being.

If Mattingly’s in town or Clemens is working tonight or McGriff is on a tear, it will be easy for them to say the owners and players have done enough penance for their trespasses right now and it’s OK to go back to the games. After all, we didn’t fall out of love with baseball during the strike, just seriously out of sorts.

Even if the fans do start packing the stadiums again, though, as they were last season when a major league attendance record was in sight before the strike darkened the fields, the fans have accomplished far more in the two months of this season than the owners and players accomplished in the 232 days of the strike.

By their absence, the fans let baseball and every other sport know they’ve about had it with being manipulated by people who carry their respect and understanding of games around in their wallets.

The Associated Press estimates major league baseball will lose $300 million this season. Good. The rascals may not understand words like honor and history and tradition and loyalty, but they do understand the monetary system.

Attendance is down about 20 percent in major league parks. That’s clearly a reaction to the strike that took away one-fourth of the 1994 season, the most exciting season in baseball in three decades; took away the World Series and took away 18 games and a sense of wholeness from the 1995 season.

This may be a milestone in professional sports. This may be the first step in a fans’ rebellion. You would not want to mess with them right now, in any sport. They now know they can fight back.

American League President Gene Budig says, “Baseball has been given the ultimate wake-up call.” That may be true of all sports.

The boycotting of baseball was not organized: It just happened. It’s an expression of the growing anger and frustration fans feel toward pro sports. Toward the likes of Andy Benes, the San Diego pitcher, who is 0-5 and has won six of his last 30 decisions but is asking for a raise. He makes $3 million a year. He has gone to arbitration seeking $4.4 million.

Toward $84 million contracts for basketball players.

Toward a ruthlessness, an absence of loyalty so complete it would take an NHL team out of Quebec but may put one in Nashville. Toward Al Davis, the Los Angeles Raiders owner, who has spent much of his life manipulating cities, moving here, threatening to move there, taking money, demanding more. How can anyone love his team?

Toward Darryl Strawberry, who makes a fortune every year but cheats on his income tax. Toward Dennis Rodman, who says he is no longer an athlete but an entertainer and forfeits the well-being of his team to demonstrate it.

Toward spiraling ticket prices and gouging at concession stands and the incessant demands for new arenas and more money, toward 3-hour baseball games, four-hour football games. Toward snail-like movement in golf and the bloodless, shapeless form of tennis. And on and on.

Sports have been so taken by the allure of television with its big money, they are developing a shrugging disregard for the fans who buy tickets. Whatever TV wants, it gets. Paying customers are getting a little tired of that, too.

There was a time when pro sports belonged to all of us. Sort of a public eminent domain. The owners and players were just caretakers. But money changed that. Now the fans can take it or leave it.

Baseball fans have been leaving it and the owners are feeling the effects in their counting rooms. And no doubt owners in all sports are watching.

The outrageous salaries, the movement of franchises, the egomaniacal behavior, the selfishness, all of it may continue.

But this decline in attendance should have brought home to the fans the realization that they can do something about it.