I grew up in New York City in the 1960/70’s and as a kid and later a teen, the New York Yankees and New York Mets were my life before I discovered girls. Baseball was my favorite sport and I’d go to endless baseball games a year as well as watch most of the games on WPIX and WOR, the local New York Stations. Most of the games lasted no more then two hours and ten minutes or so back then and some games last less then an hour and a half if you had some fast pitches playing like Joel Horlen of the Chicago White Sox and Whitey Ford of the Yankees. Most Sundays I’d go to doubleheaders and had a great time. Doubleheaders are almost obsolete now and even if they weren’t I have no desire to spend 8 hours at the ball park. Today, I hate Major League Baseball and simply don’t follow it. Basketball and football are my sports now. I don’t think I’m alone.

Back in the 1960’s and 70’s, somehow the players seemed more human and the game was a game not curtain call theatrics. The biggest difference was of course the time. Games moved along at a fairly brisk pace and there simply wasn’t the curtain calls, endless pitching changes and other managerial
controlling delays, that may give todays managers more control, but turn more and more people away from the game. That’s what it was then a game. Today they’re trying to make games into intellectual chess matches and I have zero interest in that. The end result is I’m guessing the average major league baseball game is between 3 1/2 hours and 4, when a long game was 2 1/2 hours 20 years ago.

Baseball players were underpaid before free agency and I’ll totally agree they were financially screwed back then and as a result, a lot of them had to take regular off season jobs. This actually made the players if you met them in person or saw them on TV or read about them, more human. Todays players come off like their own private corporation in the media and distance themselves from the average person. If these guys would at least show some more humility or something it wouldn’t be so bad but alot of these players, albeit I don’t know any personally, come off as spoiled prima donnas.

While I agree baseball is a business, baseball seemed less of a business back in the 60/70’s albeit the players were exploited too. But you just didn’t see the wholesale changes of players due to free agency today. Back then, you could count on a teams leaders to be back each year for continuity with the exception of when the Mets traded Tom Seaver because he wanted, what an extra $200,000 or so, what a joke. Met fans including myself were traumatized. That was the rare exception rather than the rule. Nowadays, you’ve got team icons like Johnny Damon jumping too their rivals!

Other than Johnny Damon, Bobby Bonds and a few others, I don’t even know the names of Major League Players anymore or even know who’s in first or leading the league in home runs. The only player I’d actually pay to see today is Tim Lincecum because of his unique pitching motion. I don’t care! PS I didn’t even mention Steroids!

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