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Bill James Online -- subscribe here -- has become a kind of market parody: it discounts its market price by 70-90%, it is (arguably) the best baseball site online, and it (inarguably) fills a niche. As opposed to what all the stats-aggregate and team-blogging sites do. Quite apart from any local undercurrent that attaches to the question, does anybody have any idea why this man charges $3 a month?! How many of his subscribers would bail out at $5?
I would pay $20 a month for Hey Bill alone. Anyway, today's light bulb:
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Hey Bill, I live in Cincinnati and root for the Reds, but when I am at a game, I swear the most enjoyable moments in the ballpark are when the Reds are tied or winning by 1 or 2 runs, and the visiting team is threatening to score. There's no music or any other distractionary [baloney] and the whole crowd seems quietly, intensely focused on the game. Is this how baseball used to feel a much larger amount of the time, or is that just phony nostalgia? If it isn't, is there any chance we get back there, at least part way?
Asked by: matt_okeefe
Answered: 11/13/2013
In the fullness of time it could happen. There was a time when people thought that artificial turf was the inevitable wave of the future. The public--led by a small number of SABR-type people and a few ballplayers, like Dick Allen--revolted, and expressed a clear preference for natural grass. In time, baseball came around. A similar thing COULD happen in this area.
One time in the 1990s I went to a Royals game. They had turned off all of the noisemakers; no music during the innings, no walk music for the players, no orchestrated "cheers" (Make some NOISE!). It was great; I thought they had really hit on something. Turned out they were just having a software problem with the system that controls all the nuisance noise; it was back to normal the next day.
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And then, today, this:
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I agree with you on the quiet park thing. Two quick stories -- I've gotten very tired of regular season games at the ballpark (Bronx) because of all the distractions, but one of my favorite baseball experiences were two consecutive ALCS games in 2000, both tense, because everybody was on the same page; everybody was focused on home plate 95% of the time. Second: three years ago I attended my first NFL game, in Cleveland, and I really appreciated that (a) everyone is focused on the game, and (b) there is some scoreboard nonsense (trivia etc.) but everyone ignores it. MLB can learn from the NFL here. The way it's going to happen, is a larger version of your anecdote -- some team will experiment with a quieter park as a way of communicating "No B.S.," and will instantly become another Fenway, if you like, or Wrigley when it was day-only, a park that's not like the others. And if it works, other teams will look at that pretty carefully.
Asked by: wovenstrap
Answered: 11/14/2013
Well. .. but another way it could happen is, fans could organize and demand less nonsense at the park. Or the dislike of distractions at the park, expressed here by several people, could become so generally expressed on talk shows and in other sources that there develops a nascent understanding that this would be preferred by most people. Or there could be a rival league that approaches the game in a different way, playing the games in two hours (as a matter of course) and without distractions, and the success of that league could force the older leagues to adjust. My point is that it is impossible to foresee the future, which is what gives us hope that things can improve: that there are many avenues by which baseball COULD realize that it is walking down a forlorn parth in this regard.
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You get it?
James backs up to 30,000 feet. He asks, what would happen if you set up a rival league that did it the opposite way. He posits that the new league would win the marketing battle, and resoundingly, and that it would win the marketing battle with Soccer Mom.
You can go North and focus on HOME PLATE, or you can go South and focus on something else, or you can go to Pluto and focus on what the Seattle Mariners do.
Since August 1, 2001, the Mariners have chosen to place their focus less on home plate than does any other MLB team -- let's not even talk about Fenway Park or Wrigley; let's just talk about Texas or Tampa -- and they have reaped the benefits. What is the Mariners' attendance, now, compared to what it was when the public first bought the ballpark for them?
No doubt they understood the city to say, "Hey, the attendance was 3 million because that was sooommmme kiiiinda mall around four bases." Personally, I understood the city to say, "Baseball in the open air is Americana." And we didn't mind Lou Piniella baseball, either.
The CEO gave a recent interview, of which the most important thrust was "Only the geeks focus on home plate." I think he has fundamentally misunderstood the nature of his product.
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