NO ECONOMY SLOWDOWN FOR THE DIAMOND BUSINESS

The reader shouldn’t be mislead into thinking this piece concerns the jewelry trade. We don’t really know how our recent pseudo-recession has affected the diamond ring peddlers, and couldn’t care less, quite frankly. As may already have been otherwise surmised, our current subject is baseball.

A review of the appropriate internet files will readily show that ballplayers aren’t exactly living off food stamps, or expecting the sheriff to knock on the door any minute with lock in hand. It’s further obvious that the major league clubs don’t seem to be hurting either, since they have plenty of funds available to pay their field stars. Even mediocre and downright inept performers have drawn fabulous sums in this past and earlier seasons.

If time permitted, we’d enjoy calculating the 2010 campaign’s average salary per time at bat for hitters, along with that per third of an inning pitched for moundsmen. One can rest assured that the arithmetic results in each case would be on the astronomic side. However, player remuneration doesn’t appear to be the only extravagance evidenced by their well-heeled employers. The club owners are proving themselves equally careless regarding the use and cost of balls. Anyone watching a game on the tube can easily see what we mean.

Since this writer dates back a number of years, recollections abound from the olden days when ball consumption on the playing field was far more conservative. The major league clubs would buy the most expensive ones at a dollar each, less whatever volume discount they were accorded. Meanwhile, those of us who cavorted as youths on makeshift vacant lot diamonds could only afford the cheaper twenty-five cent models, which suited our needs very well.

Even at prices we’d now dismiss as “peanuts” by ultramodern standards, the big leaguers applied extreme care back then, in order to avoid wastage as much as possible. A baseball would be exempted from further use only if hit into the stands to become a take-home souvenir for a skillfully-handed fan, or else ordered by the umpire to be discarded due to scuffing or a torn seam. Fouls not leaving the field were retrieved by the nearest player, to be thrown back to the pitcher for continued service. At the end of a half-inning, somebody would leave it at the mound to be picked up by the next hurler for his warming-up and subsequent action.

By way of contrast, what do we observe nowadays, in this period of supposed economic downturn? Heck, balls are being passed out to fans as if they were favors at a birthday party. The clubs employ teenage-looking boys or girls to gather up the fouls and blithely give them to frontal seat occupants. The last player to have one in his possession when a half-inning winds up obligingly tosses the spheroid into the closest stands, as eager hands raise up for the catch, resembling baby birds waiting to be fed by their mother.

We don’t know the discounted price of a baseball these days, but feel certain it exceeds a dollar by more than a bit. What we fail to comprehend is this 180-degree swing from prior age parsimony to downright lavishness when it comes to per game consumption.

At the end of the line, who is paying for these plush salaries and wastrel ball practices, undoubtedly complemented by a myriad of other extravagances? Nobody but those cheering fans who more often than not fill the stadia to maximum capacity, after shelling out highly inflated sums for tickets. We humbly advise our readers to stay home and watch the games on the moron tube instead.