Put me in coach, I'm ready to play, today. Look at me, I can be, centerfield.

Going to a baseball game is usually a joyful experience for me, especially at this time of the year and the fact that we are currently leading the Wild Card race makes every game exciting: except today. I don’t know what it was about today’s game, but the atmosphere inside the ballpark was very “dead”. I even made this comment to my friend whom I went with and we both said afterwards that it was a boring game, not because we lost, in fact, we won today, but because there was barely, if any, buzz, aside from a handful of moments. The announced attendance was around 35,000, but it definitely seemed as though there were numerous empty seats to contradict that number. The fans only got loud after we scored or if an important pitch needed to be made, which was pretty rare since our pitcher was really shutting the other team down. Otherwise, there was no buzz in the air, which is something I’ve grown accustomed to and I tend to expect when attending any sports event. The other thing that confuses me is that we had a lot of opportunities for atmosphere to emerge and grow. We left 12 men on base and had the bases loaded twice, I think. That usually gets the crowd into the game and it did for those moments, but soon after the end of our mini-rally, the crowd went back to whatever was holding their attention, which certainly wasn’t the baseball game.

I have only one theory for this rare occasion: Sunday afternoon baseball games are days for families to bring their kids to the ballpark and have a family day. We saw plenty of kids with their parents and many of them were very young, as was the case 2 rows down from us where the one child was around a year to 14 months old and the other child looked less than a month old. Don’tget me wrong, I could care less how people spend their dollars and if they want to bring their kids to the ballpark I think It’s great, but those people aren’t paying attention to the game because their kids are too young to have the attention span to sit for 3 hours and watch a baseball game and the parents, consequently, have to spend the majority of time occupying their kids attention, which then detracts their attention from the game. So, maybe out of the 35K that attended today’s game, let’s say 35% are the parents of or are the kids, which is roughly 12,250 people. Those 12,250 people aren’t taking the necessary interest in the game to help generate excitement and only 22,750 remain to carry the energy. Of those people, I would guess 5-10% will be occupied with watching other people’s kids or making faces at the babies. It has also become apparent to me that when at the ballpark, people cannot stay in their seats for all 9 innings and tend to wander the hallways, whether it be for food, restroom or just to stretch their legs. Let’s assume this is another 2%. Now we are down to a little over 50% of the announced attendance actually in their seats and cheering at the appropriate times.

You’ve probably guessed that I don’t have kids, but I do have a 3 year old nephew and I know his attention span is very short. I spend all of 25 seconds on the phone with him before he gives it back to my sister and says “later!” When I do have kids, I will probably bring them to sporting events while they are still at that uninterested age and all of this will just be me ranting while I’m currently on the other side of the ball. In the meantime, we’re in a playoff race and I’d like to feel like it while I’m enjoying a well-pitched game with my friend. Going to this game was actually a little bit of a downer and we won! I went to a game last month that we lost poorly and there was a lot more excitement than today. It’s just weird, that’s all I’m really saying. I want encourage bringing your kids to the ballpark. In my eyes, any show of support for your local team is a positive and spending time with your family is doubly important and it is really special when you can mix the two together. Just remember to scream a little now and then to let us folks who are paying attention to the game that you’re here and that you’re going to help us scream and shout our team to victory. Go ‘stros!