Drabble by Kevin Fagan for April 21, 2024

“Sure, Penny. Here’s another $20 for that malt.”

Time to give pro wrestling another look…

I’d rather watch on TV.

Two questions:

What is Penny eating that looks like wood?

Is Ralph actually NOT eating? I didn’t think that even high prices would kill his appetite.

Now you know why I never go to Fenway Park by myself.

Shohei Ohtani’s $70 million salary, crazy.

Frozen malt? Does Drabble take place in 1955?

Wow, I had forgotten all about those frozen malts. I’m not even sure I’ve seen one or even heard of them since 1963. Now I want one.

Who wears pearls to a baseball game?

As long as the fans keep buying, the insane salaries will pile up.

The last baseball game I watched was when I was coaching my niece’s youth softball team.

This is about the Toronto Blue Jays… and the Toronto Maple Leafs … and the Toronto Raptors … and Toronto F.C. Multi-millionaire athletes who never actually compete.

Mets story the first week of this season. Since then it’s been a glance to the past of the Miracle Mets.

I wouldn’t give the useless $+*$ a cent.

I would have took one look at the fact that we’d be the only ones there, and left

and #9 sold furniture in Montreal to make up

I used to follow a team but quit when a main player’s ego got even bigger than his ridiculous salary. He was traded away but I just can’t get into it anymore, knowing an unproven rookie that sits on the bench makes more in one game than I or any of my coworkers make in a year.

Like going to a Vancouver Canucks game now that they’ve actually made it into the play-offs…an event that is only slight less common than an eclipse…

We were on vacation in Scottsdale last week. One of the things my husband wanted to do was go to a D-Backs’ game. The ticket was $74. Parking was $25. He got a hotdog, soda, Crackerjacks and a bag of chips. $32 which I didn’t think was bad. For a family of 4, that would be $550. I only counted parking once. I don’t see how regular families can go to a lot of games.

What DID cost was the stuff he got at the pro shop the day before the game. I didn’t go with him and when he handed me the receipt, I was stunned. I knew he’d be spending a bunch of money but $550? Really? For what he got? OMG. (I saved for this trip knowing it would cost so that wasn’t the issue)

Brad is from Mesa so the D-Backs are his team. A friend said that teams change colors and designs all of the time so fans will buy new stuff. The last thing Brad bought was a purple jersey when the team was first franchised years ago.

That’s not just baseball. It’s every professional sport.

I do not watch any professional sports. When they change the rules to “you get paid if you win, not if you loose”, I’ll watch. Talk about a serious game. Just a bunch of over paid prim a donas. The owners have out priced the attraction.

It’s obscene what it costs for a small family to go to a game.

Family time is priceless!

So are the rest of us.

Go Dodgers!

With the new pitch clock, she won’t have time for a second frozen malt.

Prices don’t work that way. Do you think for a moment that if owners’ expenses dropped significantly that they would LOWER prices? No way. They’d keep on doing what they (and all other businesses) do: charge what the market will bear.

Expenses DO affect profit margins, though. And if a business cannot achieve sufficient margins it will cease. But that’s not what has EVER happened in baseball. Back in ’78, with free agency relatively new, Pete Rose signed the biggest contract in history: $800K per year. People lost their minds. It was going to ruin baseball. Who could ever pay a player THAT much money? It lasted about a month when Nolan Ryan signed for a cool mil per year. Today, the MLB average salary is $4.5 million. Back in ’78, MLB attendance was about 30 million. Last year, it exceeded 70 million, with revenues exceeding $10 billion.

So, complain about the prices, but it’s pretty obvious people are willing to pay them.

Husband and I are not big sports fans.

That having been said – as a boy he went to several NY Yankees World Series games. His dad was in business and a salesman would say to him something like “Hey, I have tickets for the Series game – I’ll bring my son and you bring yours” and they were box seats not the nose bleeds.

When he was in graduate school he agreed to join some friends from his class at a (regular season) Mets game. (Mets games do not involve bridge and tolls, Yankee games do). He convinced me to come along as I had never been to a professional baseball game. I should have been suspicious at the US$3 price of the tickets – it was in the nose bleed section. I am afraid of heights. Going up to the seats was not that bad and I closed my eyes a lot of the time during the game. But when it was time to leave I had to keep my eyes open and see how high up we were as I walked down. He had a friend Big Al (tall, heavily built fellow) who was nice enough to walk down in front of me – one step at a time so I could not see how high up we were.