Photo by Bob Cook
A sellout crowd, at a game that doesn't count, involving the putrid Pittsburgh Pirates. Yep, the steroid scandal sure is killing baseball.

Kick Out the Sports!
by Bob Cook

Bob Cook's weekly ruminations on sports appear Mondays in Flak.

BRADENTON, Fla. — To hear the grand commentators of Major League Baseball talk, there's always something threatening to kill the game. Labor strife. Salary imbalance. The designated hitter. Interleague play. George Will's bloviating. And the latest threat, the possibility of widespread steroid use.

You'll excuse me if I don't wring my hands for baseball's future in the wake of Mark McGwire crying the sincere tears of "no comment" in front of a House committee investigating steroid use in baseball. I'm too busy using them to signal that I need three tickets to a spring training game hosted by, of all teams, the sad-sack Pittsburgh Pirates.

Yes, the steroid scandal has really put a dent in fan interest in baseball, which somehow has the Nietschzean ability to use what doesn't kill it to make itself stronger.

I'm one of many unsuspecting fans who arrived March 26 at McKechnie Field, the Pirates' Grapefruit League home, for an exhibition game against the Philadelphia Phillies not even thinking about the possibility it would sell out. After all, they're the Pirates. They haven't had a winning record since 1992, when they won the last of three straight National League Eastern Division titles behind a slender young superstar named Barry Bonds. The concourse outside the 5,600-seat field was full of dads like me, with kids in tow, trying to score seats. Few were selling, which is why one guy was trying to pass off his $11 seat, the most expensive in the ballpark, for $40.

In a way, it made sense that the park was overrun. It was the peak of spring break travel season in Florida, as noted by the Islander, one of the weekly newspapers serving nearby Anna Maria Island, a beach and resort community along the Gulf of Mexico. In its March 23 edition, the Islander ran a story on its front page headlined "Islanders prepare for 'spring' invasion," in the vein of late-1860s Utah newspapers presumably running front-page stories headlined "Mormons prepare for 'locust' invasion." Plus, McKechnie Field is one of Florida's most historic spring training facilities. This is how long it's been around: the 1930s St. Louis Cardinals pitching staff got the nickname "The Gas House Gang" because a few of them ran a gas station across the street from the field. (If the Pirates' pitchers were running the current business across the street, they would be known as "The Used Car Lot Gang.")

But I learned the ticket-begging wasn't confined to one Saturday featuring hordes of pasty-faced Northerners freshly arrived. A waitress at Popi's Place, the diner next to McKechnie Field where I took my 7-year-old son and 5-year-old daughter for lemonade while I assessed my scalpee strategy, mentioned to me that this spring had been the busiest ever as far as she could tell.

We went back outside to scrounge again for tickets. Most of the dads with kids had left, mostly because they could. They had paid $10 to park in the forlorn neighborhood around McKechnie Field, and had their cars handy. We, on the other hand, had taken a bus ride from the local mall, and another bus wasn't coming until after the game, so we had to stick around. Fortunately, a guy who had extra tickets from a United Way group purchase (it was United Way Day at the park) sold me three seats at face value, $5 apiece.

When we got into the park, it was apparent that whatever problems were affecting baseball would not affect the game. The beauty of the spring training tradition is that it's a warm shower to wash off whatever filth built up in the offseason. The fans are, literally, close to the players. For example, at McKechnie Field, you can walk up to a fence running along the rightfield stands and watch pitchers warm up in the bullpen, and get their autographs. Players run from the dugout to the bullpen near the stands, stopping to slap hands and sign autographs along the way. In the eighth inning, when PINOs (Phillies in Name Only — the guys who wouldn't be making the major league club) were on the field, a few players such as Placido Polanco entertained the fans by running wind sprints on the warning track.

Spring training is ingrained as a sign of winter's end, as much as the birds flying north or your local municipality announcing the garbage collector will resume yard waste pickup. It wouldn't matter if every player showed up looking as artificially beefed as a pro wrestler. What's going to replace this ritual? For that matter, what is going to replace baseball as America's official sport of spring and summer?

A few days later, the Bradenton Herald confirmed what the Popi's Place waitress told me by running a story about how the Pirates were frequently selling out. Down the road in Sarasota, the local Herald-Tribune reported that the equally sad-sack Cincinnati Reds were having one of their biggest attendance years ever. Teams also feel they are successful enough to try to gauge the local citizenry. For example, the Tampa Tribune reported that the Cleveland Indians are locked in a battle with the city of Winter Haven over stadium improvements and revenue splitting, with the team considering leaving Winter Haven, or Winter Haven considering plowing down the stadium and building condos, as a result.

The upshot of all the hand-wringing and opining over the threats to baseball, particularly the steroid threat, is this: fans don't care. They're too addicted to baseball to stop. Look at soccer elsewhere — does it become less popular in the wake of scandals such as referees fixing games or Americans trying to buy beloved teams? Some sports in some places are scandal-proof, and baseball in America is one of them.

All I know is, if I go back to McKechnie Field during spring training next year, I'm buying my tickets in advance.

E-mail Bob Cook at bobc@flakmag.com.