Spring Training Nothing

The first games of Major League Baseball's Spring Training have been played and I find myself curiously apathetic.

I used to look forward to Spring Training as a harbinger of warmer weather to come. In Maine, winter can be quite grueling and may last beyond a reasonable expectation. So Spring Training was like seeing the first robin or the first crocus poking up through the ground. It was a vicarious thrill to watch the players easily tossing a baseball under a yellow sun with palm trees swaying in the background.

However, now I couldn't care any less.

Most professional sports have made themselves inaccessible to those of us who refuse to drop large sums of money on cable or satellite television every month.

When growing up, I used to watch the Boston Red Sox regularly on network television. Now, the only time I can catch a Red Sox game is if Fox carries a Saturday game or if the Sox make it into the playoffs. And that's not even until the ALCS as the ALDS has been claimed by TBS. During the season, the games are broadcast on New England Sports Network (NESN).

The last time I watched the Boston Celtics play was in 1987. Now they are broadcast on Comcast Sports Net (CSN) and I don't even know if our cable provider carries that station.

The Boston Bruins, like the Red Sox, are on NESN as well.

It's not just television. Back in 1975, a group of us attended a Red Sox game at Fenway Park. It was my first time at Fenway. We were able to get box seats behind the home team dugout for only $5. The last time I took my wife and two sons to Fenway, we sat out in the bleachers and I paid almost $500 for the four seats. That doesn't include the cost to get there and back or any food we may have purchased. Grand total for the evening was probably close to $800.

I know prices go up over the years, and I know that businesses have a huge overhead, so they look to make even huger profits. I get all that.

But the common, blue collar experience of going to a ballgame has been replaced with something that's only easily available to those who would be considered elite.

I imagine the same is true for the other sports teams as well. I've heard that the outlay to attend a Patriots game is quite steep.

However.

HOWEVER.

The NFL is still broadcast on network television (with the exception of Monday Night Football). With my little 32" flat screen and antenna, I am able to immerse myself every week in a few hours of rough and tumble competition.  

To actually be able to watch in real time the plays that are talked about the next day on sports radio makes for an engagement which is not possible by following a team via internet news wrap ups and video clips.

I don't know if the NFL will ever go the broadcast way of the other sports, but until it does, give me football season over baseball, basketball and hockey.