Donald Dewey
Ballparks
I went to a ballpark recently. I forget what the score was, but what I do remember
is that there will be a Prada Uniform Shirt Day in a couple of weeks, that Linda
Ronstadt recorded “Hasten Down the Wind” in 1976, and that it’s all right to drink
gallons of Budweiser provided it doesn’t make you drunk. I gleaned this
information—and much more—from the park’s Octophonic Dolby Sound,
Emerald Vision Scoreboard, and Lower Deck Goodyear Blimp.
A friend of mine (let’s call him Sid to protect all the non-Sids) goes into
tantrums when he hears such things; not for him the spectacular bath of commercial enterprise, historical recollection, and moral concern that marks modern sports stadiums. Sid is one of those traditionalists who thinks a ballpark should be a place only for a ballgame. For that reason, he says, he has stopped paying his way into any arena that vaguely resembles an outdoors horseshoe filled with tiers of seats and topped by light stanchions. Instead, he spends his evenings at home listening to that Frank Sinatra dirge about how there used to be a ballpark but now there’s only a housing project with a lot of broken elevators. In short, Sid is one of those people stuck in the lobby of his nostalgia.
I have little sympathy for this obsession with long-gone yesterdays. As far
as I am concerned, the reason ballparks used to offer nothing but ballgames
is they didn’t have the imagination or marketing skills to provide more. Thirty
years ago fans were satisfied with less because they didn’t know any better.
They thought they were content with the mingled aroma of sweet grass, grilled
hot dogs, and cigar smoke; thought there was no purer sound than that of a
wooden bat connecting with a rawhide ball to ricochet it around the slats
of unoccupied grandstand seats; thought there was no more blissful sight
than the sculpted clarity of a dirt infield set down within an erratic
skyline of apartment buildings, smoke stacks, and elevated train tracks.
But then again these were the same fans who thought radio was the ideal
medium for broadcasting games. I'm sure, though, that nobody ever
saw five slow-motion replays of a ground ball to short on the radio.
One of the things I appreciate most about the modern stadium is that it has been transformed into a television set without a chassis. When I stroll through the turnstile, I know I’m not going to miss anything I would have seen if I had stayed home and turned on the game. All right, maybe I’m not as committed as those people who cart along portable Sonys so they can be both in the stadium and in their living room. But I am comforted by the knowledge that, if I don’t have an informed opinion about what has taken place on the field, I merely have to glance over the shoulder of the fan sitting in front of me and peer into his cellphone to get one.
But that’s the least of it. Not even my Cinemascope living room screen
offers the gamut of programming the typical scoreboard in a modern stadium does.
Traditionalists like Sid talk about getting out to the park before the game to
watch batting practice. Sid’s father (a clue to his genes) even recalls when
there used to be something called infield practice—apparently something
of a mime performance in which a coach hits fungoes to second basemen who
don’t have to worry about when they fire to first. Different strokes for different
folks, I suppose. When I get to the stadium early, what I can see, thanks to
the scoreboard and its enormous screen appendage, is the latest news
headlines (FEDS LOOK FOR BLACK BOX, TEXAS EXECUTES NINE MORE, FLORIDA
EXECUTES ONLY SEVEN AND TRAILS BY TWO); a supermodel speeding along a
desert highway in her new Datsun; a list of American League pitching
leaders in the ratio of ground balls to fly balls surrendered;
a warning that smoking causes prostate cancer, a supermodel getting
Penzoil for her new Datsun; a Tampa Bay third baseman diving into the
stands after a foul ball and spilling soda over a three-year-old;
a warning that prostate cancer causes Michael Milliken and Tommy LaSorda;
a fragment of a Bugs Bunny cartoon and the address of the closest Time
Warner store for buying the whole short; and a supermodel getting the
brakes of her new Datsun relined at Meineke. And mind you, all without
having to zap.
What I enjoy even more than the scoreboard show is the continuous concert.
When the home team takes the field, it does so to the theme from Rocky
(if it’s a losing team), Over the Top
(if it’s a winning team), or Rambo
(if it’s a losing team under the illusion it’s a winning team).
When the opposition’s most feared hitter strides to the plate,
the selection might be “Get Out of My Face;” when he strikes out,
a Woody Woodpecker cackle accompanies him and his $20 million salary back to the bench. For the home team heroes, there is Richard Wagner or Richard Strauss at his most mythical.
There is also music directly for the fans. Between “Get Out of My Face”
and “The Ride of the Valkyries” we get to brush up on our history by trying
to remember whether Roberta Flack recorded “Killing Me Softly With His Song”
in the year that (the choices are posted by dancing scoreboard lights)
Richard Nixon was forced to resign, the year that St. Helen’s erupted,
or the year that Johnny Carson had his 11th anniversary special. Various
stadiums also feature groundskeepers shuffling to “YMCA” as they smooth the
infield, announcers leading the crowd in “Take Me Out to the Ball Game,” and
stuffed mascots rocking on the roof of the home dugout. And keep in mind, this
is all after the group sing of “The Star-Spangled Banner” and/or “O Canada.”
(Yankee Stadium, where George Steinbrenner has replaced Uncle Sam as a national
icon, goes still further with its seventh-inning renditions of
“America”—sometimes as delivered by Kate Smith, sometimes by some Irish tenor,
and sometimes by a thug of an usher determined to get everyone on his feet to
vaunt the necessary patriotism.) To close out the day’s entertainment, and
depending on the ballpark in question, fans can leave the stadium hearing
Sinatra singing “Chicago,” “New York, New York,” or “Arlington, Arlington.”
I don’t usually need all these entertainment breaks because, after a few
innings of the Wave, I feel as spent as a catcher completing an inside-the-park
home run. There are, of course, rival claims to the origins of the Wave. One
school of research attributes it to Oakland Athletics fans back in the days
when Charlie Finley was selling their seats out from under them and they were
very tentative about getting to their feet. Another traces it to an Oregon high
school; and still a third attribute it to Mexicans attending the 1968 Olympics
and 1970 World Cup games in Mexico City. No matter; the important thing is
that the Wave works as a tonic for those long stretches during a game
when the players do nothing of interest. And by jumping up and down in
synchronization, not only do we get the opportunity to puncture the
canard of belonging to a sedentary culture, but we can also knock dangerously
greasy foodstuffs out of the hands of the people behind us.
There are also the promotions, and here again modern sports facilities are light years ahead of those old places that handed out team caps or pennants with nothing written on them except team insignias. As fans in Washington and Brooklyn would be the first to attest, Senator and Dodger caps doled out at Griffith Stadium and Ebbets Field have become increasingly dated. On the other hand, I know that when I receive a Cy Sperling Cap at Cinergy Field or a 3M Sports Bag at the Metrodome, these items will maintain their value long after the Reds have moved to Vancouver and the Twins to Osaka. The modern stadium promotion does not deal in perishables.
Traditionalists like my friend Sid don’t want to acknowledge such advances.
They still think of attending a ballgame as being akin to turning on National
Public Radio news—the show for its own sake without commercial interruptions.
They aren’t even placated by what I consider the most disturbing trend in
stadium culture in recent years—the retro ballpark. What a Camden Yards actually
represents is the usual failure of nerve by baseball owners—a lack of will to
admit the past is dead and priority should be given to putting the future behind us
. When a franchise like the Mets emphasizes how much its new Citifield will
recall Ebbets Field, it reminds me of those computer-driven television commercials
in which long-dead actors like Humphrey Bogart and Fred Astaire are
recruited for pitching Doublemint gum. Those who are tempted to reanimate
history are doomed to forget it.
Fortunately the modern stadium doesn’t allow me to dwell too
long on these dark thoughts. Whenever a Sid starts wandering down
memory lane to tell me how it used to be, or some team owner insists
I can have my cotton candy and eat it too (for five bucks a gossamer pop),
I think of that big scoreboard out behind the outfield fence,
imagine some cartoon rodent or bird scurrying back and forth, and make
a lot of NOISE!
©2009 by Donald Dewey
