Contrary to the advertisem
ent broadcast during Detroit Tigers’ telecasts, it’s not my bank and it’s not my ballpark. I’ve never been inside Comerica Park. I’ve never been inside Ford Field.
And I resent it when professional sports teams’ marketing campaigns suggest erroneously that they are my teams, as in “Your Detroit Pistons.” They’re not my Pistons, they’re Bill Davidson’s. They’re not my Tigers or Red Wings, they’re Mike Illitch’s. They’re not my Lions. They belong to the Ford family.
There’s a reason why I haven’t darkened the doors of Detroit professional sports teams. I did during my silly, naïve and impetuous youth, but I don’t plan to go there any more.
I have grown weary of laying down my hard-earned and meager supply of money to watch millionaire ballplayers play for billionaire owners and con me into believing it really matters. To add insult to injury, those who venture into ballparks and arenas also must pay outrageous prices for food, drink and parking. You really pay a lot to “root, root, root for the home team.”
We, the huddled masses, the working stiffs, somehow gladly cough up big bucks just to show up and watch from huge distances our athletic heroes perform. I’ve been told that it’s special to be at the ball park or at the arena while it happens because of the roar and excitement of the crowd. All I remember when attending such events were obnoxious drunken people making too much noise calling attention to themselves and doing the wave, thereby distracting me from watching the ballgame.
I began my boycott of attending pro sporting events in 1994, during that awful summer when baseball and the World Series weren’t played. While I heard a lot of angry friends and acquaintances vow they’d never go to a ballgame again after that, the vast majority returned, much like the abused wife returning to the evil clutches of her abuser.
I have faltered twice in the 22 years since the baseball strike, both because of children. Both of my kids were scouts and the Tigers in 1995 had a special scout day in which the kids got in free and were permitted to march around the stadium. The other was in Denver on Father’s Day 2011, when Cy Young Award winner and MVP Justin Verlander overpowered the Rockies, who play only about 45 minutes away from my eldest son’s home.
Otherwise, I have limited myself to watching or listening to such spectacles on TV. I have vowed not to lay my money down to “feed the greed.”
There are those who would say I still support the Tigers economically when I only watch them on TV (with a much better view of the game) because sponsors are marketing to me. However, I don’t get the Bernstein advantage, I don’t buy Little Caesar’s pizza, I don’t visit the helpful hardware folks at Ace, I don’t have Wallside Windows.
And most often I don’t watch or pay attention to the commercials because I absolutely despise marketing and advertising, which the late comedian Bill Hicks accurately described as “Satan’s Little Helpers.”
Though I have many worries of late about it, I still prefer to a large degree following the fortunes and misfortunes of amateur athletes, particularly those who toil on behalf of the schools they attend. Yes, I care a lot more about Wildcats, Vikings and Clippers. I even know some of them. I worry because they seem to be trying their darndest to be just like the pros.
I told my wife two decades ago that the only way I would ever again enter the gates of Disney World would be in a coffin because of my aversion to feeding the greed. I have grown to fell the same way about pro sports.
“There’s a sucker born every minute.” — P.T. Barnum
When the taxpayer has been suckered into subsidizing ballparks and stadiums for pro sports teams and then charge outrageous prices for tickets and snacks, they lost me. They want new facilities, let the millionaires and billionaires pay for the construction themselves. I watch high school and college – pro sports hold no interest for me – they are entertainment, not sports.