THE SPRING OF OUR DISCONTENT;

‘THEY FORGET IT’S A GAME’

Palm Beach Post (Florida) February 12, 1995

Copyright 1995 Palm Beach Newspaper, Inc.

CANDY HATCHER

Baseball didn’t used to be like this.

It didn’t used to be about payroll caps and performance bonuses and free agents and the right to demand trade. Sure, the people who played it made good money, and the ones who owned the teams made more, but baseball wasn’t about business. At least not for us.

Baseball was sometimes high drama, but more often it was conversations and peanuts and plodding afternoons in the sun. Baseball fields were where 7-year-olds and 77-year-olds came together, hoping to see a home run or a stolen base or a miraculous catch.

Sometime, somewhere along the way, baseball’s intangibles got stuck in right field and forgotten, and the tangibles have taken over. The word ”strike” no longer means a batter has swung and missed. It means the game Americans played through two World Wars, the game that brought us Babe Ruth and Willie Mays and Joe DiMaggio, the game that taught youngsters to calculate statistics better than any math teacher could, the game we thought would keep going and going and going. . . . has stopped.

Kids no longer trade baseball cards. Sports enthusiasts have turned to football and basketball and hockey. Fans who planned to come to spring training next month to see Greg Maddux pitch for the Braves or Moises Alou field for the Expos or Mike Piazza catch for the Dodgers will be watching major league wannabes and usedtobes play ball – or they won’t be coming at all.

None of South Florida’s spring training games has sold out. Twenty percent of the seats in West Palm Beach’s Municipal Stadium – 1,400 seats – have been removed in anticipation of smaller crowds. Souvenir shops aren’t stocking anything with the names or photos of major league players or the dates of spring training.

One-quarter to one-half fewer spring training tickets have been sold throughout South Florida and the Treasure Coast. That means fewer hotel rooms booked, fewer hot dogs ordered, fewer beers consumed.

Florida stands to lose hundreds of millions of dollars – Palm Beach County and the Treasure Coast tens of millions – because baseball this spring is not what it used to be.

No one even knows the names of the replacement players who will show up in Florida this week, shouldering the responsibility of bringing baseball back to life.

”We gotta give the people something, remind the people about baseball,” that it still exists, said Pete Skorput, the Atlanta Braves’ spring training director.

For some fans, it’s too little, too late. Vince Megna, a Milwaukee fan from West Palm Beach, has no interest in seeing minor-league players in major-league uniforms. ”You feel a sense of loss, then you accept that there isn’t going to be any baseball, and you do other things.”

THE MANAGEMENT

The team staffs trying to prepare for spring training haven’t known whether to look for major-league stars or minor- league unknowns. ”We’re optimistic one day, and down the next,” said George McClelland, spokesman for the Mets in Port St. Lucie. ”We don’t know what tomorrow brings, but we’re getting ready like it’s normal.”

Last year, ticket sales were ”very steady,” said Ham Higgins, the Braves’ spring training ticket director. ”Opening day last year they stood for three hours to get up to the window. This year, we had one man.”

He has compared his job to that of the Maytag repairman. But he’s hopeful the fans will show up. Reporters still plan to be in Florida, at least for the first few weeks, and team officials all over Florida stubbornly – and optimistically – insist the strike won’t drive away loyal fans. It’s merely ”a bump in the road of baseball,” they say.

Ken Lehner, the Florida Marlins’ Brevard operations director, is trying to hype spring training, but he acknowledged that this year is more difficult than last. Baseball ”has always sold itself,” he said. ”This year, there’s more of a need to go out and resell the game.”

The Marlins, a season-and-a-half old, have no longstanding fan base. Instead, the team is trying to attract families and new fans with a series of game day promotions. They’ll give away calculators, tax advice, Marlins golf balls and St. Patrick’s Day hats. They’re introducing a ”shuttle snack” – a sandwich, apple and chips in a cardboard box shaped like the space shuttle. They’ve built two beer gardens where they’ll sell ”specialty” beers and sandwiches.

And they’ve bought 25 tables and 25 benches for the concession area because ”it’s a social thing to be at spring training,”  Lehner  said.  ”One  of  the  beautiful  things  about  spring  training  is  that  winning  and  losing  doesn’t necessarily count. You create memories during spring training. We want to create an atmosphere, particularly this year with the strike and the adversity it’s brought, for fan-friendly, festive, fun times.”

Rob Rabenecker, Expos spring training director, said the team is ”preparing as if there’s going to be a full spring training.” Because of the uncertainty, he said, programs have been sent to the printer without a player roster, in case the strike ends. If the strike isn’t settled, replacement players have been chosen and the team is ready, Rabenecker said.

It’s business as usual at Dodgertown in Vero Beach, said manager Craig Callan.  ”It’s not just a spring training site. We’re going ahead full steam.”

Dodgertown, a 450-acre complex of baseball fields, golf courses and businesses owned by the Dodgers, is steeped in history. The stadium, built in 1953, has open dugouts and a grassy field for standing-room-only fans. Dodgers officials say their games never sell out. They’ve packed in as many as 9,000 fans – 1,600 more than capacity at Municipal Stadium in West Palm Beach.

McClelland of the Mets said the fans, even the ones boycotting spring training this year, would be back. ”Once it turns warmer and the bat hits the ball, those people are gonna come back. I don’t blame ’em for being upset, but they’ll come back.”

THE MERCHANTS

Merchants are anxious about this baseball season. It’s going to be ”hugely different, there’s no doubt about it,” said Bill Upshaw, general manager of the Palm Beach Gardens Marriott, where the Braves stay.

”We’ll have some facsimile of baseball, but not even on the order of minor league. No one knows what they’re going to suit up and put out there. . . . It’s been a long time since anyone’s played baseball,” and fans have gone on to something else.

In previous years, Upshaw said: ”There was demand for hotels all around us. People want to be around these teams and around the stadiums, and they were willing to pay a sizable dollar to be here. It’s big business.”

Not so this year, he said. Fewer rooms have been booked. Hotels are filling up, but only at the last minute.

In Melbourne, merchants say spring training-related business will drop slightly, but the Space Coast won’t feel the pinch as much as more established baseball towns. Still, ”those 10 or 15 rooms we’re missing, we’ll have to scramble a little bit harder” to sell, said Scott Armison, general manager of the Comfort Inn, where the Marlins team and staff stay. He estimated that baseball generates about 5 percent of his business.

Port St. Lucie, a town whose tax base has built up around the Mets stadium, is bracing for a more substantial loss.

Luring the New York Mets to Port St. Lucie ”was a big thing for this town,” said Jo Ellen Conti, who with her husband owns the Dugout Diner. ”It’s given it an attraction for New Yorkers. They see it on TV every spring. It’s not an unknown little town anymore. . . . People ask me every day: Are they gonna play? I don’t know. (Spring training) is kind of an exciting time. I’m hoping that if people have made their plans, they’ll come anyway.”

THE FANS

The major-league players who come here every February are idle. They’re talking to their agents. They’ve been chewed out by the president. But they swear they’re not playing baseball again until they get more money, better benefits, more protection built into their contracts.

The team owners are just as stubborn. Players don’t take the business risks owners take, so they’re not entitled to the profits, owners say. They say they ought to be able to run their business the way they see fit. They promise baseball will be back, that it’ll be a game again. It just won’t have the big names.

Many fans blame the players, who they say are greedy and spoiled and have become more actors than athletes.

”Somebody puts a mike in their faces and they start popping off about labor relations, fair market value and a lot of other catch phrases they picked up at some cocktail party or from their agents,” said Paul Mulach, 74, a former major-league player now living in Stuart.

They’re ”a bunch of pompous idiots,” Mulach said.

His words were echoed by 11-year-old Patrick Jennings: ”They’re being silly.” Jennings, a Marlins fan, plays third base on a Little League team in Melbourne. Someone, he said, ought to ”sit ’em down and say to the owners and the players, ‘OK, which issue do you want most?’ And get them to agree. They should be able to sit down and talk it out.”

Jose Alvarez, a former Braves pitcher who retired in 1993, is right in the middle of the dispute. He’s coming to West Palm Beach this week as a replacement player. ”I’m healthy and pitching well,” he said. ”It’s an opportunity for me to get back in the major leagues. I feel good about showing my skills. . . . This is kind of a new start.”

He says fans have a tough time understanding the difference between baseball the sport and baseball the business. ”As a player, it’s both. You have to have the little boy in you. You have to have some business sense in you, too.”

The strike doesn’t mean an end to baseball, he said. ”You’re still gonna have dads bringing their 7-year-olds to the stadium for baseball.”

Mark Kettlewell, 37, has been coming to Dodgers games since he was a teenager. ”I’m here for the sport; I’m here for the  game,” said  the  Vero  Beach  man,  who  hopes  to pass  along  his  love  of the  game  to his  little  girl. Replacement players or major-league stars: ”I don’t care. I’m not tired of baseball. I’ll never be.”

Mulach, the retiree from Stuart who played with the Dodgers organization in the 1940s, hopes fans will go to spring training and remember what baseball was like before it became a business.

”Give these minor leaguers a chance to show you how good they are,” he said. ”They’ll run faster, throw harder, slide into base without worrying about getting a strawberry, and happily smile at you and be pleased to give you their autograph on request.”

What baseball brings to Florida

More than $ 350 million a year, directly and indirectly, from tourists and the teams ($ 305 million in 1991).

850,000 people from other states. The average fan from outside Florida attends four games a year, spends $ 17.90 at the stadium and an additional $ 45.52 each day, is here for nine days and travels with three other people.

220 to 250 jobs in each community where 20 major league teams play.

Entertainment for 540,000 Florida residents. The average baseball fan from Florida attends six games a year, spends $ 16.84 at the game, another $ 9.77 outside the stadium on game day and goes to the game with two or three others.

‘The potential adverse impact on the Florida economy is enormous, not unlike that of a natural disaster. Unlike a natural disaster, however, this disaster is predictable and avoidable.’

– Gov. Lawton Chiles in a letter to President Clinton, September 1994

Sources: 1991 Florida Department of Commerce study and 1993 study for the Tourist Development Council of

Palm Beach County

AT STAKE

What baseball brings to Palm Beach County:

$ 36.54 million a year, directly or indirectly, from tourists who attend games.

$ 8.5 million from those who come just for spring training games.

72,000 people who come from outside the county specifically to see baseball: 32 percent from Georgia, 25 percent from the East Coast; 13 percent from Canada, 12 percent from Florida (other than South Florida), 8 percent from New York.

Sources: 1991 Florida Department of Commerce study and 1993 study for the Tourist Development Council of Palm Beach County

AT STAKE

What baseball brings to the Treasure Coast:

Vero Beach gets $ 5 million in business when the Los Angeles Dodgers are in town.

Port St. Lucie has built around the Mets. Down the street from the 7-year-old stadium, there’s the Dugout Diner, the Sports Page Grill, a McDonald’s and 2,000 houses.

St. Lucie County gets between 1,000 and 1,200 tourist inquiries a month. Each response mailing includes a Mets spring schedule.

‘A year ago, this place was busy with everybody coming around. Now, it’s slow. It’s kind of sad without them. I hope they come back.’ – Clarence Flemming of Vero Beach, 30-year Dodgers employee, on major league stars he’s seen milling about Dodgertown during previous spring training seasons.

Sources: 1991 Florida Department of Commerce study and interviews

STRIKE CLEARANCE SALE

Cut-rate spring training tickets:

MONTREAL EXPOS, West Palm Beach

Before: $ 6 to $ 12, season tickets $ 78 to $ 156

Now: $ 4 to $ 7, season tickets $ 52 to $ 91

Expos will not divulge ticket sales, beyond saying sales are slow and season ticket sales are down about 25 percent

ATLANTA BRAVES, West Palm Beach

Before: $ 6 to $ 12, season tickets $ 80 to $ 160

Now: $ 4 to $ 7, season tickets $ 57 to $ 96

Single ticket sales down 45 to 50 percent, season ticket sales down 15 percent.

FLORIDA MARLINS, Melbourne

Before: $ 3 to $ 12, season tickets $ 140 to $ 188

Now: $ 2.50 to $ 6, season ticket holders get 50 percent refund after spring training.

Marlins will not divulge ticket sales, beyond saying as of January they had 25 percent fewer season ticket holders for 1995 than for the previous season. Single ticket sales begin Feb. 25.

LOS ANGELES DODGERS, Vero Beach

Before: $ 8, $ 5 for standing, season tickets are $ 128

Now: $ 3.50 on game day, $ 2 standing, $ 4.50 refund on advance sales.

Season ticket holders can get a full refund if dissatisfied, but lose the right to buy season tickets next year. Season ticket sales are down 10 percent, single ticket sales start Feb. 20

NEW YORK METS, Port St. Lucie

Before: $ 6 and $ 8, $ 140 for season tickets

Now: $ 3 and $ 4, $ 70 for season tickets

Season ticket sales are slow; single tickets go on sale Monday.

VOICES

Voices on the strike and spring training:

‘The whole world went through world wars and never canceled baseball and all of a sudden, everybody’s greedy and we have no World Series.’

– Greg Horton, bartender at the Crazy Horse Tavern in West Palm Beach

‘The owners make millions off merchandise and contracts and TV rights. Players want a share of that. I don’t fault them for that. It’s not a game. It’s a multibillion-dollar business.’

– Vince Megna from West Palm Beach, a Milwaukee fan.

‘We just want to see a ball game. I don’t care if they’re replacement players. (Major league players are) getting a very, very fair salary, and they forget it’s a game. A lot of people would play for nothing. I wish they’d settle and get back and play baseball.’

– Henry Sayde, a part-time West Palm Beach resident who roots for the Yankees.

‘I had hopes (the strike) would be over with by now. It’s too much of an American pastime to have that happen to it.’

– Frieda Unger from Liberty, N.Y., a Dodgers fan.