Hot Dog Days of Summer

As I wandered around leafy Van Cortlandt Park this morning—in the waning weeks of spring with the green as green as it will be—I contemplated what was in the offing: summer heat and humidity. So far, there have been only a few hot and humid reminders of what is likely to come to pass. I haven’t turned on my air conditioner once this season. Considering that our planet is in something of a death spiral—warming faster than originally predicted—I’m not complaining.

Ah, but the summer days that I once knew have all drifted away. Once upon a time, I played baseball in Van Cortlandt Park. It’s where the boys of summer would go to “hit some out.” We managed to play games sometimes with only four people. Easily accomplished: self-hitting, no running of the bases, and a third of the field in play—no pitcher, one infielder, and one outfielder. We were a resourceful lot in an age before technological gadgets. Today, I passed by the very fields of green where we once played the game we loved. Busloads of kids were in the park this morning—and were all around me and engaged in sporting activities—but clearly baseball wasn’t their game of choice.

Baseball completely dominated the dog days of my youth. On a professional level, today’s game bears little resemblance to its once magnificent forbear. I recently read that Major League Baseball attendance is down for the fourth consecutive year. Considering the cost of attending a ballgame, that doesn’t surprise me. When I was a boy an entire family could go to a baseball game without emptying the savings account. Baseball was the American pastime then: a sport that catered to the average man and woman. With 162 games in a regular season—and 81 home games—baseball was played virtually every day in the summertime.

Often it was a spur of the moment thing: Do you want to go to the Mets game tonight? What kind of seats should we get? Even the premium seats available were relatively inexpensive. A field box seat at Shea Stadium in 1977 was $5.00. A general admission seat in the upper deck—where you could almost touch the planes taking off and landing at nearby LaGuardia Airport—could be had for a song. I saw a game with my father and others at the Big Shea in 1974. We sat in the cheap seats for $1.30 a head. Factor in the inflation, do the arithmetic, and compare yesterday’s pricing with today’s. That was then and this is now.

Of course, it’s not only the excessive costs that are driving people away. Nowadays, ballparks function more as entertainment centers—restaurant row meets the shopping mall meets Disneyland—than unique and intimate baseball homes. For me, take me out to the ballgame was about the ballgame—and, of course, the trappings of the ballpark: a scorecard, a couple of hot dogs, and a cup of flat soda covered with Saran wrap. I was never really into Cracker Jacks and peanuts. But I always appreciated seeing the spent shells of the latter on the ground, which was invariably sticky from spilled soda and beer. That was the baseball experience in a nutshell. Sampling a repast at a Fuku’s or Pat LaFrieda’s—well, that wasn’t on the menu. The hot dog at the contemporary ballpark is pricey enough, so I can only imagine what the LaFrieda’s “Original Filet Mignon Sandwich” goes for at Citi Field.

I checked out pricing for tonight’s game at the aforementioned ballpark—alas, poor Shea Stadium, I knew you well—between the Mets and Colorado Rockies. The cheapest seats are the “Promenade Outfield” at $25. A fancy name for “bleachers,” I guess. Seats in “Bud Light Landing” and “Coca-Cola Corner” are $50. A field box is $96 and there are all kinds of extrapolations that go from there, including “Baseline Gold,” $139 and “Field Silver,” $144. And then there is the premium seating, which includes the “Hyundai Club” at $232, “Metropolitan Platinum” at $469, and “First Data Platinum” at $635. Do you want to go to the Mets game night? I don’t.

(Photos from the personal collection of Nicholas Nigro)