Bye Bye Baseball

Dear Red Sox,

I’ve loved baseball since I was a kid, and I’m pushing sixty. That’s a lot of innings. I grew up in and around New York, so I must admit that I started my days as a fan of the Mets and, especially, Yankees. But I’ve lived in Massachusetts for most of my life, and renounced New York shortly after the debacle of ‘86. I’ve loved Boston ever since. I’m writing to you today because that’s what unrequited love does to a person: it forces you to write pathetic letters. Because I know you don’t love me back.

If you cared about fans like me, middle class folks, you’d get the Sox off of NESN and back onto broadcast television. When I was a kid, every Yankees game was broadcast for free on WPIX, so the game was always on. I knew those players better than my family. It was the same here for the Sox: WBZ, WSBK, WFXT… The old model let regular people fall in love with the local team, shop all the local and national products that paid for the broadcast, and pass the love of the game to the next generation. I got infected with my love for the game because my grandmother watched every night. The sound of a baseball broadcast goes deep with me: alongside the sound of screen doors banging and summer crickets and neighbors washing their dinner dishes.

Sometime in the 80’s, when cable television came around, we were told that the business model had changed: consumers could pay directly for cable access, and not be subjected to all those commercials. Subscriptions would pay for the broadcast! That lasted a hot minute, until cable networks realized that they could sell ads AND subscriptions. Most people fell for it. The networks, the teams, got their fans coming and going. And everyone on the supply side made out like bandits.

But I’m not paying a hundred bucks a month to get the cable package I need in my town to watch the Sox. I’ve tried to get behind my hometown team for the last decade or so but it’s pretty hard when you can only follow them on websites or radio (when they happen to be on when you’re driving). So I have no idea what this year’s team looks like. I only know that they are sitting at .500, in last place. Get the Sox back on a network people don’t have to pay to see and you won’t be wondering why nobody cares any more. The cable experiment failed.

I’m a fifth grade teacher, by the way. I could be championing the Red Sox to my students, sharing my enthusiasm, passing the baton. But I have no idea who this team is. And if you’ve lost older fans like me, you’re lost. My students couldn’t care less about baseball. They’re into soccer.

So I really am gone, even though I still love you. It’s a rainy Sunday afternoon in early July as I write this. The Sox are in Toronto. It would be nice to have a TV on.

We’ll always have Pedroia,

Doug Adams