Selig clueless when it comes to Golden Age

According to baseball's erstwhile commissioner, Bud Selig, the game is currently in its golden age. Selig bases his theory on two factors. Not the least of which is the fact that it is Selig himself, in Selig's mind, who is responsible for the current attendance boom, which is the main basis in the commissioner's theory.

As I look at it, baseball took off when the teams started erecting new stadiums to replace the odd structures that were built when the game suffered from lack of attendance, in some locales, in the 1960s.

Quite possibly the game is no more popular than it ever was. There are just more people around to watch it. Our country now has a population of more than three hundred million. That's 300,000,000.

If you stop and think about it, the population of the country didn't even go over the two hundred million mark until 1970.

But let's keep going back to a time when one million was considered a whopping attendance for a season. And there were plenty reasons. The first team to draw a million customers was, of course, the New York Yankees way back in 1920. That must have been a heck of a year for the Polo Grounds as the Yankees and Giants, between them drew 2,219,031. And they say there was fallout from the 1919 Black Sox sandal. Where?

One reason teams drew a lot fewer fans in those days was all the games were played as they should be, under God's sunlight. Since most people work in the day, there never were that many extra hours except on the weekends.

The next reason is that New York had three teams while Chicago, St. Louis, Boston and Philadelphia had two each. In plenty of years, the total for two-franchise cities was well over a million.

If you're looking for more reasons, there are plenty. Transportation wasn't what it is now. If you lived very from from the park, you simply didn't go very often like today where you can easily jump in your car and take in a Royals game any night. Years ago, a trip to Kansas City was a major undertaking.

To give you an idea of when the game caught on attendance wise, here are the first years each of the original 16 teams drew a million. First, the American League: Boston 1946, Chicago 1951, Cleveland 1946, Detroit 1924, New York 1920, Philadelphia-Kansas City 1955, St. Louis-Baltimore 1954 and Washington 1946. National League: Boston 1947, Brooklyn 1930, Chicago 1927, Cincinnati 1956, New York 1945, Philadelphia 1946, Pittsburgh 1947 and St. Louis 1946.

From the numbers, it is easy to determine that baseball enjoyed its biggest boom, relative to previous seasons, in 1946 when the men returned from World War II and craved entertainment. Those that didn't make it in 1946, had a better year in 1947. While not all the teams drew a million either year, nearly all of them did except the poor St. Louis Browns, who once drew 80,000 for an entire season.

One thing that really hurt a lot of teams beginning in the late 1950s was the deterioration of neighborhoods, which brought on a lot of crime near the old parks like: Ebbets Field in Brooklyn, Sportsmen's Park (Busch Stadium I) in St. Louis, Washington D.C.'s Griffith Stadium and Philadelphia's Shibe Park, to say nothing of Kansas City's Municipal Stadium. And those were just a few.

Teams were moving into those circular monstrosities where only a few teams really fared well.

Selig can say what he wants about this being a golden age. But one attendance hype has been the addition of playoff teams everywhere you look. At one time, baseball was a perfect game where each teams played the other seven teams in the league, 22 times, 11 at home and 11 on the road with several doubleheaders, usually on Sunday afternoon. The season was 154 games long.

Now, they play 162 games and doubleheaders come about as often as a blue moon. But in your league, no telling how many teams are still in the race, especially with that awful wild card where a team can finish fourth in games won and still make the World Series.

Another reason for today's increased attendance figures is the retro-look stadiums. If this is the gold age of the game, then why do they want the ballparks to look as if they were built in the 1930s from the outside with all the comforts of home inside.

These days, you can go to the ballpark and look at a huge TV. The game is secondary to the ancillary entertainment. The golden age of baseball? No! The golden age of hype? Yes!