Dismay

Disgust and Dismay at the Electoral Ballpark

by Dick Starkey

Let’s face it: Baseball, like most of the print media and all the major religions, is losing its fan base. In all three categories, it is mainly young people who have drifted away. The internet, Facebook, Twitter, etc. have replaced newspapers and magazines; aging clerics and hoary-sounding moralisms are causing once-responsive teenagers to flee. Baseball is just too stately – all right, slow – for the young and their fast-paced lives. Most of all, however, it is money that has pushed aside what once was the national pastime. The three-figure cost of attending the average game is one aspect of the problem; the determined drive of TV networks to recoup their investments by attracting prime-time audiences is another. For many observers, this accessibility factor is the key.
 

Raise your hands, East Coast fans, if you stayed up to the end of the seven World Series games. Until game seven, we made it once – game one – waiting for the type of Royals comeback that characterized their play throughout the playoffs. After that we joined the diaspora – the millions of fans who opted for sleep, and others who defected to competing NFL football games, or entertainment fluff like “The Big Bang Theory.”

Prof. Stephen Greyson, Harvard Business School specialist in sports management, presents the case simply: “If the premier part of your product starts after 8 Eastern time and it’s during the week, it’s really hard to develop young fans.”

The impact of money on US politics has been lamented for years; never more so than in this election when the 2010 Citizens United decision is being felt more broadly today than ever before. Under the heading, “The Disgust Election,” Lefty pitcher Timothy Egan, delivering for the NY Times, says Citizens United has generated “a sense that average people have lost control of one of the last things citizens should be able to control — the election itself.” The feeling is understandable, given the billion-dollar outlay by the Koch brothers and other outside groups to buy the support of congressional candidates in battleground states. Then there is the court approval allowing voter suppression in nearly half the states; in some of which (like Texas), Egan notes, “you can vote with a concealed handgun ID, but not one from a four-year college.”

Righthanders are unhappy about the upcoming election, too. But, unsurprisingly, their dismay has nothing to do with Citizens United and/suppression of young and/or powerless voters. The Wall Street Journal’s Janet Hook gives this view from the right-field stands:

“The GOP’s advantage springs more from intense anti-Obama feelings than from a wave of voters who believe Republicans will transform Washington. Indeed, disillusionment with politics may help explain why Republicans’ edge isn’t wider at a time when job approval ratings of the Democratic president have slid into the 40% range. The backdrop of this fall’s voting is a mood of voter anger over the status quo, polls suggest. (Days) before the Nov. 4 election, it isn’t even clear what exactly the midterm contests are about. No single issue dominates, except unhappiness with the established order.”

Dem disgust versus vague Team GOP unhappiness: it adds up to nervous scoreboard-watching on the left side of the national ballpark.