For the Love of the Game

My father is a baseball fan. When we visited colleges my junior and senior years of high school, we would be one of the few families in the bleachers watching the D-III team play ball. If, when he's driving any distance, he comes upon a little league game, he will stop and watch unknown teams in an unfamiliar suburb.

And, like most New Yorkers, my father bleeds pinstripes. He holds Friday night season tickets at Yankee Stadium, and was present at the end of last season when the Yanks played their final game in the House that Ruth Built.

The Yanks will play their next season opener in a newer, cleaner, and soulless stadium located adjacent to the Bronx's Mecca. The stadium promises to be more luxurious, with a high-def LED scoreboard, cup holders, more restrooms (1 per 60 guests, versus 1 per 89 fans in the old stadium), and wider seats to accommodate the girth that has been added to the average New Yorker's gut (19-24-inch width, versus the old stadium's 18-22 inches).

But that's not all fans are getting. They're getting fewer seats, more luxury boxes (for fans, indeed), and higher prices on seats that allow fans to see the field without the aid of binoculars. The "legends" seating, whose price is not published in the club's official website, is rumored to contain seats costing $500 to $2500 per ticket.

Not everyone can buy these seats—doubtlessly, however, corporations have—but even seats in the terrace (mezzanine) section of the stadium pay $40-75 per ticket per game. The $12 bleachers and $20-25 grandstands, however, are still available for those with eagle vision or a thin wallet.

These ticket prices do not also include the cost of parking or subway/rail tickets, or the cost of food or beverage. It's not unreasonable (by Yankee Stadium standards) for two people to spend an additional $50-100 to travel to and eat at a game.

I like to believe that baseball is America's pastime because it is accessible to all Americans: urban, rural, rich, poor, and, incidentally, immigrants with a mean fastball. The final cost of attending a game at Yankee stadium, however, has become prohibitively expensive when it is "cheap" for a father to spend $100 to take his boy to a ballgame. It feels as though the notion of loving the sport of baseball has been tainted, and we must look to the game at its roots: a ball, a bat, and a mound of dirt.