Sports Beat by Riley Denver
Canadian baseball fans strike out when it comes to support
A long fly ball to deep left field. “It’s back, way back and GONE!”
What Canadian sports fan can help but get chills when they remember Joe Carter’s 1993 World Series-winning home run?
That home run was the peak, the top of the mountain for baseball fans in Canada. Sadly, it has been downhill from there.
Now consider this: next season will be the tenth anniversary of the Blue Jays’ first World Series win.
The 2001 season is also the 20th anniversary of the Montreal Expos only division title.
Great moments for either of Canada’s major baseball teams have been few and far between since the glory days.
This season, the Blue Jays finished the year with a record of 80-82 and the Expos went 68-94.
What’s worse, it looks like the fans’ thirst for baseball has dried up.
The Expos drew a measly 640,000 spectators this season. That comes out to fewer than 8,000 fans a game in a stadium built to hold closer to 50,000.
The Jays averaged about 23,000 fans a game. There was a time when you could not get a seat in the SkyDome. Now, they have roped off certain areas where they don’t even sell the seats anymore.
This is indicative of baseball at all levels across the country.
The Ottawa Lynx scrape and claw all season to boost attendance at beautiful JetForm Park. Promotions like “Hippie Night” and “Hawaiian Night” were designed to do one thing: put butts in the seats.
Other minor league teams in Vancouver, Edmonton and Calgary are only as stable as the next night’s attendance.
This season, the London Werewolves of the Frontier League (professional baseball’s entry-level position) actually gave tickets away for free. So much for “If you build it, they will come.”
People blamed the 1994 players strike that cut short a season in which the Expos led the National League East division. That team featured Larry Walker, Moises Alou, and Pedro Martinez among others and would have won the division, maybe even the World Series.
League-wide, attendance has taken a hit since 1994, and the Expos and Jays have never been the same.
But if the strike is why you did not go to a baseball game at any level this past summer, then you have been holding a grudge for far too long.
If that’s why only 21,895 people made it to SkyDome for Cal Ripken Jr.’s final game in Canada and why fewer than 7,000 attended the possible final game in Montreal Expos history, then here are two words for baseball fans in those cities: Grow up.
A baseball game is an event. Baseball is hot dogs and cold drinks on a hot summer day.
Baseball is kids begging for autographs and mascots taunting the opposing team.
If people are not going to baseball games because of a seven-year-old labour dispute, get over it.
You never know what you’ve got until it is gone. Support your favourite team, because when teams leave, they don’t look back.