Bustoff -> RE: Is MLB Better Now Than in the Past? (2/11/2008 5:20:21 PM)
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I "discovered" baseball in 1958, and between then and 1968 I must have gone to at least 20 games a season at the old old Busch Stadium, and then the newer old Busch Stadium. I could wax poetic about the sights, sounds and smells that made each of those games memorable, but it would make for a very long post. Back then, quite simply, it was a game. The players were just that--players. Some of them were heroes, or champions, or whatever, but they didn't...I'm looking for a word here...flaunt (?) themselves as such on the field or in public. They were just guys who were lucky enough to play a game for a living, and they didn't let it go to their heads. As a kid, I could look up to them as role models for how they played, not how much money they made. Somewhere back there, baseball stopped being a game and became a business. GNDN touched on this, and he is on point. Players are no longer players but commodities to be invested in. Fans are no longer fans, they have become customers--sales prospects, if you will. The game itself has almost become incidental--a necessary evil only because the owners haven't figured out they can get rid of it and still make money. Almost everyone who cut their teeth on the baseball of the 80's, 90's and 00's has no idea what the game used to be and what they missed out on. Don't get me wrong. I still like baseball. I can't help it, it's part of who I am. But dammit, I used to love it. Where have you gone, Joe DiMaggio? A nation turns its lonely eyes to you.
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