Game Day Thoughts

It is a fun experience to visit a big league ball park and watch the best of the best play nine innings of Major League Baseball. Names like Glavine, Jones, Griffey, and Arroyo are right there in front of you and not framed by a TV screen.

Turner Field is beautifully manicured with grandstands that seem to reach to the sky; it must be an awesome sight for the little kids to behold. Everything seems ten times its size when we are kids.

$50 for a ticket, $4o for a program and souveniers, $12 for parking, $3o for food and drink, and none of that includes the $50 worth of gas it took to get from Augusta to Atlanta and back.

Was it worth it? You bet. But it is all so impersonal.

Fans scream out, "Go get 'em Tommy" when Glavine takes the mound. They chant, "Chipper, Chipper, Chipper" when Jones takes the plate. They scream from the heights of the stands at a great distance from the players, but that is as close as they get. And most fans can't even afford to go to all the home games.

I'll take Minor League Baseball any day, where a game doesn't take a whole paycheck to get the full experience and fans call out players names because they interact with them on a personal basis. The highest seat in the stadium is still closer than most of the good seats in a major league ball park-and you can even sit in the same section as an owner or the General Manager. They may even know you.

Americans spend millions of dollars every year to sit in the nose bleed sections of arenas, rinks, racetracks, stadiums, and ballparks. It's time they looked into minor and developmental leagues.
For my money, that's where the fun is.