Reznet

Take Me Out to the Ballgame

By Melissa Morgan (essay), Jasa Santos (audio) and Devin Wagner, Martina Lee, Breanna Roy and Jasa Santos (photography)

DES MOINES, Iowa – They come to socialize, to entertain the kids, to get out of doing yard work. And for many, the thought process doesn’t go much deeper than that.

“My wife loves (baseball),” joked Brad Harris of Grinnell, Iowa, during a Cubs game on June 10 in Principal Park. His wife, Lynette, laughed.

“Brad is full of beans,” she later said while braiding their daughter Daisy’s hair. “I’m just along for the ride.”

The fans had perfectly good reasons for attending, but it seems like the game called “America’s pastime” deserves more than that.

Shouldn’t we feel more passionate about a game with that title?
At a minor league baseball game, where tickets are inexpensive ($6 for general admission), fans don’t have many serious thoughts or feelings about the game.

Like the Harrises, many families show up at the games.

“That’s where the future is,” said Clay Porter, 65, of Adel, Iowa. “You need to keep the kids coming.”

Those children seemed just as happy to be playing in the stadium’s fountain, as they were to watch the game. One little girl, dressed in an Iowa Cubs cheerleading outfit danced between the sprays of water, her wet hair sticking to her face. Other children tried to stay cool by filling baseball hats with water and dumping them on their heads.

Perhaps we attend ballgames for a reason that’s difficult to explain. People need to feel a connection to others. We like to feel like we’re all part of the same ritual. Like the songs and activities – the same played at every game. This was seen while the songs and games that were played, the same songs and activities that are probably played at every game.

When the Little League team sang “Take me out to the ball game,” almost everyone stood, clapping their hands and singing, from the small, energetic children to the elderly who had trouble getting out of their chairs.

That day, the crowd filled about half of the stadium. There were babies in strollers and gray-haired retirees in wheelchairs. Fans came dressed in short shorts and tube tops, exposing multiple tattoos, while others were more conservative in khaki pants and long-sleeved shirts. They were Rosie O’Donnell-obese and Nicole Richie-skinny.

All the crowd lacked was some color -- of the skin variety. Out of a crowd of 8,401, there were maybe two dozen minorities, and that’s probably pushing it.

Of course, Des Moines is overwhelmingly white, with less than 10 percent of the population being people of color.

Garrette Boone, an African American from Des Moines, said he attends the games regularly with his mixed-race family and doesn’t let the lack of racial diversity bother him.

“It’s going to be a long, hard road and there’s a lot of healing that needs to be done,” Boone said, explaining racial tension and possible reasons that minorities might not want to attend the game.

He added that minorities need to “stop griping” and start branching out more.

“There’s opportunities for everyone,” Boone said. “It’s just a matter of how hard you wanna go to get it.”

After all, regardless of skin color, doesn’t everyone want to get out of yard work?

Steven A. Chin is reznet's managing editor. A former new media specialist at the Robert C. Maynard Institute for Journalism Education and former reporter at the San Francisco Examiner, Chin is principal of MKmedia, a web development consulting firm.