Baaaaaaa

No matter how you abuse them, fans just keep coming back

The problem with fans -- and, really, this is meant in the nicest possible way -- is that they are basically stupid.

It's not just that fans will spend $50 for a ticket or $7 for a beer or $6 for a hot dog just to be at a sporting event that they could better see from their La-Z-Boys. Although, true, none of that exactly qualifies them for a Mensa card.

But the real problem is that, after they put their hard-earned dollars of disposable income into the pockets of people much, much richer than they are, they'll do it again. And again.

Like the swallows of Capistrano, like a 40-year-old prizefighter, like the heartburn following one of those infernal stadium dogs, they always come back.

Nobody knows that better than baseball, of course. Nobody abuses its fans, then sucks them back in quite like the national pastime. Abusing fans, in fact, is the pastime of the national pastime.

Raise prices? The fans keep coming. Talk taxpayers into forking over for a new stadium? They come by the thousands. Wipe out a whole pennant run, the World Series and part of the next season?

Dr. Martin Schmidt, a professor of economics at Portland State University, co-authored an article in the journal Applied Economics last year that showed that, even after the baseball strike of 1994-95, there were no long-term effects of a strike on attendance.

The fans came back.

"Basically, the argument was that while you have the initial impact [of lost attendance] because you lose the games, if you look at the behavior of attendance the next year and the next, it returns to the same pattern," says Schmidt, who is soon to publish another paper that shows the same is true in the NHL and the NFL. "Statistically speaking, there is no difference in behavior of attendance prior [to a strike] and the behavior of attendance post."

Paraphrasing here, what Schmidt is saying is that fans are sheep. Big, old not-so-smart sheep.

There are people -- fans, even -- who are trying to change this. Fan advocacy groups like Baseball Fans Unite International and MLBfanstrike.com are trying to spur fans to strike back against baseball.

Earlier this season they organized a couple of boycott days, though it's really hard to tell what effect they had. These groups now want fans to boycott a game for every game that is canceled in the event of a work stoppage.

It's nice and noble and all that. But, boy, is it hard to get some fans not to come back.

"I thought when a lot of people heard about this, the light bulb would come on," says Jeff Santaite of MLBfanstrike.com. "But it just doesn’t seem to click."

People are hacked off about a possible strike, they really are. They go on the radio. They e-mail. They threaten. "If they go on strike," write the e-mailers, "I'll never go to another game."

Sure they won't. In 1993, Major League Baseball attendance was somewhere around 70.2 million. It dropped in '94 and '95 because of the lost games and was down in '96 and '97, too. But by 1998, attendance was around 70.6 million. Last year, it was at 72.5 million.

Granted, there are more teams now than there were in 1993. But the fans -- certainly most of them -- eventually came back.

"They know and you know and I know that if there's another strike, the people will come back," Pete Rose told the New York Post last month. "They always have and they always will."

There are some, in and out of baseball, who say that another strike would ruin the game. This time, they swear, fans would not return. Not after what happened in '94. Mark McGwire said so last year. Curt Schilling has said it this year. Bob May thinks so, too.

"Fans this time around are a much angrier group than they were in '94," insists May, of Baseball Fans Unite International.

But the proof just isn't there. Fans come back. That's what they do.

The fact is, players may not go on strike this time. A lot of people think that, this time, owners and players will find some kind of middle ground and they'll avoid the game's ninth work stoppage in the last 30 years.

So, hopefully, there will be a pennant race and the playoffs and, yes, ultimately a World Series. And the stands will be filled with grateful fans who have paid a ridiculous amount for their tickets and hot dogs and drinks just to sit in their tax-supported stadium and make the owners and players a little bit richer.

Bless their little fan hearts. They're just not too bright.

John Donovan is a senior writer for CNNSI.com. Comments? To e-mail Donovan, click here.

 

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