Celebrate Summer With Baseball

"Take me out to the ballgame, take me out with the crowd, buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack"... and cotton candy, popcorn, giant pretzels, chili dogs, hamburgers, nachos, nonfat yogurt, fat ice cream, 20 kinds of beer, bottled water and carrots.

Yes, carrots. Besides all of the food hawkers selling enough carbohydrates and cholesterol to fuel an Olympic village, a few vendors offer selections from "healthy" refrigerator cases for the one or two health-food aficionados who don't want to chew antacid tablets all night. Even fresh strawberries are available at triple the grocery store price and accompanied by a side helping of whipped cream, just in case a calorie-counter's willpower weakens.

I love going to baseball games because they don't require any mental heavy lifting. They're our national circus and we are its clowns. When we go to the ballpark we're always guaranteed a spectacle; big league baseball spends millions on gimmicks to keep us entertained. 

Unlike the opera, a symphony or a play, professional baseball doesn't demand that its spectators pay close attention to the main event, because it offers instant replay, big-screen close-ups and an announcer who repeats, and repeats and repeats what's happening on the field. 

This week marks the halfway point in the baseball season. Doesn't seem possible, does it? How can it be the Fourth of July already? The yard is just starting to look good, and the barbecue is just getting warmed up.

But the calendar doesn't lie. When the National League and American League all stars take to the field in Seattle on Tuesday, we're halfway to the World Series. Now comes word from Nielsen Media Research, via the Wall Street Journal, that the number of viewers under the age of 18 who will watch the televised World Series has dropped by 30 percent in the past five years. Experts speculate that computer-age kids accustomed to video games and MTV aren't watching America's game because its slow pace bores them.

That's a shame. Big-time baseball today is more interesting than ever. In the glory days of Mickey Mantle and Roger Maris, it was rare for a player to hit more than 30 home runs in a season. Today, most teams have at least one batter who will belt 40 homers this year. Baseball players, as a group, are much stronger than in the past.

Nine innings offer ample opportunity to make trips to the concession stand, ogle pretty girls and handsome guys, eavesdrop on lovers' quarrels, strike up a conversation with the stranger sharing your armrest and do the Wave. Roving cameras flash our images up on a giant screen just as we're about to bite into a burrito -- "HI MOM!" Advertising blimps rain prizes down on us as we elbow each other to catch them. The home team's mascot doles out T-shirts. Fountains squirt water high into the air for every home run. We even get to sing, out loud, during the seventh-inning stretch.

We go to the ballpark to see great athletes perform amazing physical feats, but we also go to be entertained. That's not likely to happen at a lacrosse game; I bet you can't buy a foot-long chili dog there, either.

© 2001 The Women Syndicate

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