From: hobbs@a.cs.wvu.wvnet.edu (Gerald R Hobbs)
Newsgroups: rec.sport.baseball
Subject: Re: attendance 9/22 (was: Re: If you thought last year was bad)
Date: 29 Sep 92 13:04:06 GMT
Distribution: usa


In article <Bv19vx.pK@mentor.cc.purdue.edu> poutsmaj@mace.cc.purdue.edu (unknown) writes:
>
>>If I were the owner of the Pirates, I would pack up my team and head to some-
>>place where a few more people were interested in my team.  It's obvious
>>that most of Pittsburgh aren't....
>


>Game attendance is not the only measure of support. The Pirates supposedly
>have one of the larger number of listeners to their radio networks,
>especially considering the local population, and about 2/3 of the games
>are on TV here. 

Well actually 50 are on free TV. You're counting KBL, I guess.
 
>You have to consider both the local economy and other factors. It has
>been ten years or so since most of the mills closed here, and the
>unemployment figures don't show people who gave up several years ago
>on finding a job. 

They also don't count the people working at or near minimum wage
in the service sector. Ticket prices are pretty steep for those
people.

>Also, it is very difficult to drive into town from
>outlying areas to go to a game. There are no straight streets in this
>town, and every street eventually encounters a river or a twisty hill.
>What passes for expressways are 40 years old and can't be widened 
>because of all the bridges and overpasses. 

I don't really buy this. I come in from 80 miles away so that's
pretty "outlying". I NEVER have any trouble getting to the stadium.
Since I park where I know I can get out easily I don't have much
trouble getting out either. Even in the stadium lots (which are
pretty congested after the game) I think we're talking about
pretty much normal stuff for MLB. I've been to twenty-something
major league parks so I'm not totally guessing about that either.
Better mass transit would help but a lot of teams don't have
that either.

>If they actually built a baseball stadium here, things might be
>different. If I hadn't paid good bucks for a seat right by third
>base for the whole season, I would stay home and watch the games on TV.
>There are about 10,000 good seats for baseball at 3RS. When I went
>to my only game at Fenway a few years ago, I was amazed. 35,000
>seats, but they all are great! 

Yes Fenway is nice but a big chunk of the seats are in the rightfield
corner. They aren't great. I sat there a few times. Generally the 
old parks do have better seats (shorter sightlines mainly) but how 
many of those parks are left? 3 Rivers is about as typical as you
can get. The real problem in Pittsburgh is that the fanbase is small. 
Once you get beyond the metro area there just isn't much to draw from.
They are trying to expand the drawing area. This year they have TV
outlets other team's areas. For instance Martinsburg, WV (Orioles),
Charleston, WV (Reds) and Harrisburg (Phillies) stations carry at
least some Pirate games. With the Bucs recent success and the fact 
that Charleston is about equally far from Cincy and Pittsburh
they may have some luck in that region. The others I doubt.
                   Gerry



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