True fans fleeting in MLB
By Tom Schreier
I am a Twins fan, and always will be, but I have to tip my hat to the baseball fans in Oakland.
On Monday I traveled to the Oakland-Alameda Coliseum to watch a division rivalry game between the Oakland Athletics and the Seattle Mariners. The faithful A's supporters who attended the game may have been small in number, but they were genuine, passionate fans that created an incredible atmosphere in an otherwise shoddy environment.
Sports enthusiasts in the East Bay have a reputation for being inhospitable to outsiders, but it seemed like everyone in the Coliseum complimented my team as I walked through the concourses in my Twins sweatshirt. Many of them expressed their support of our teams' shared struggle against larger-budget opponents.
I was surrounded by fans who support a franchise determined to succeed by drafting and developing players, despite other teams' practice of buying wins by signing expensive free agents.
Oakland joins Baltimore and Toronto in a list of cities that at one time were a hotbed for baseball, but now have rows of empty seats in their ballparks. Teams in smaller markets are no longer able to compete with big-market franchises on the East Coast and in Los Angeles that are advantaged by their large-city locations and ability to carry six-digit payrolls.
The Orioles and Blue Jays are trapped beneath the behemoth Red Sox and Yankees in the American League East. The Angels, who compete in a four-team division with the A's, have won the AL West five out of the last six years.
True baseball fans have become a rare breed. Fleeting are the fans who speak of the games their parents brought them to as a child, or nostalgically recall ballpark memories with friends. They are being replaced by people who talk about being raised a Yankees fan outside of New York, or the time their dad went to Boston and brought home a Red Sox hat for them.
The game is suffering from the loss of true fans. Dallas Braden pitched a perfect game for the A's in a Mother's Day game against the Tampa Bay Rays. Both teams are having outstanding seasons, the Rays currently have the best record in the MLB and Oakland is in contention for the division lead. However, fewer than 10,000 people witnessed the nineteenth perfect game in MLB history.
Baseball is falling out of favor in America because of steroids, slow games and a lack of parody. Baseball enthusiasts like the ones who surrounded me on Monday should be praised by the MLB, not deserted and left to crumble like the stadiums they occupy.