Everything old is new again.

 

How nice for the Yankees to spend a weekend in beautiful little Steinbrenner field, official capacity 11,026 (though it seems to be sold out at 10,046)! The Rays are currently playing in the first ballpark to be named for an individual since the Mets decided to rip down Shea Stadium—named for the incredibly menschy and beloved William Shea—and name the new one for the financial institution that has repeatedly cratered the economies of both the city and the country.

No Casey Stengel Park? Jackie Robinson Stadium? Ah, well. With Fred Wilpon in charge, I guess we should deem ourselves lucky that it wasn't named for Bernie Madoff.

The Mets themselves recently visited one of the new minor-league parks, named for some company of the grifters we have instead of decent health care in this country—one that currently hosts the Nomadic Athletics. 

(For those of you not familiar with modern anthropology, the Nomadic A's are a small tribe that, dressed in their colorful native costumes, migrates across the North American continent. They have recently started back toward the East Coast, which they are expected to reach again sometime in the 23rd century.)

Their lovely, Sacramento ballpark, above right, seats all of 10,624, though it can hold as many as 14,014, including those who wish to gambol on its bucolic grass berms.  

As far as I can make out, these two parks are the first major-league stadiums to hold fewer than 15,000 fans since at least 1910, and possibly going back to the 19th century. Even raggedy-ass, gimcrack stadiums like the Yanks' original Hilltop Park, in Washington Heights, or Chicago's West Side Grounds, had larger capacities than these neat little, minor-league gems.

Nor are these merely stopgap measures for two franchises feckless enough to run out of options after their previous extortion demands came to nought.

No, even the parks they plan to move into, someday, Tampa Bay's Gas Plant Stadium (I'm not making this up)—

—and the planned, Ann-Marget Stadium on the Las Vegas Strip, next planned stop for the Nomads—

—will only hold "approximately 30,000" and 33,000 fans, respectively. 

(I'm kidding about the name of the new Las Vegas Stadium, of course. Nobody in MLB or Vegas has enough class or imagination to name a park for Ann-Margret. Instead, the name will change everyday, in honor of the biggest winner at the craps tables the night before.)

Sure, these architects' renderings may look like some vision of The Millennium—appropriately enough for Easter weekend—but they will be the smallest new, major-park ballparks built in over a hundred years.

So what gives?  

MLB, it seems, is joining the rest of America in going virtual. 

Virtual baseball joins virtual reality government, bitcoin, AI-generated term papers, etc.. No need to actually go to the ballpark—where all the seats will be way too expensive anyway, and perhaps completely bought up by corporate sponsors before the season starts. 

(Don't think so? Look at how Broadway is compensating for all those small theatres these days: with $600-$900 seats becoming routine. The smaller the pricier!)

For the rest of us...who knows? Maybe we'll be able to see it on the ol' TV...maybe not, considering how many games are now on streaming, or whatever. Chances are, we'll just have day-of-game, internet gambling options sent to our devices, so we can bet on each pitch. 

Maybe, in big cities like ours, they'll even set up mechanical baseball diamonds outside corporate internet headquarters. Those of us unable to get into the teeny, unaffordable ballparks of The End Times, can watch the mechanical runners move from base to base.

Just like they did 130 years ago.