Yes, it is a huge longshot.
But I don't know what club owners have in mind to keep this from ending up as another fiasco...and judging by past history, they don't know, either.
Total major-league attendance had been rising pretty steadily from around 1975, when it was just under 30 million, to 1993, when it hit a new high of about 70.3 million.
Then came the strike. The majors did not get back to that number until they drew 70.6 million in 1998, the year of the great, McGwire-Sosa Home Run Fraud Race.
After reaching an all-time high of 79.5 million in 2007, though, attendance began a slow decline, even before Covid.
(In good part, this was due to team owners repeatedly REMOVING seats from their ballparks, in favor of luxury boxes, suites, and tony bars and restaurants—making them a luxury destination.)
Still, in 2026, attendance was at 71.6 mill, after several seasons of moderate rises. And I assume that all prices are much higher than they ever were.
For the owners to destroy this growth, fighting for a salary cap they don't need, would be madness. But that's our club owners for you!
Would the owners be able to staunch a players' league, should one arise, by threatening to ban advertisers?
I don't know. If there is a players' league...what will the owners do for players? Even if they find enough scabs, won't the advertisers prefer to advertise on broadcasts of what will be easily the better league?
Carl J. Weitz mentions how Rush Limbaugh and other denizens of right-wing radio threatened advertisers into boycotting liberal Air America back in the day. But Rush and friends still had a product—albeit a noxious one—to offer in Air America's stead.
(By the way, as someone who was occasionally a guest—and, for one week, even a substitute co-host on Air America—I can attest that its problems went well beyond that. It was, for one thing, badly run—there would be entire, ten-minute gaps in broadcasting, filled only with ads. And...people of the liberal/left persuasion just didn't listen to talk radio. I sure as hell knew nobody who did.)
The big fight, I think, would be over who gets to use the ballparks. I have no idea what the contracts say, and quite possibly our elected officials were stupid enough or venal enough to give complete control to the owners.
But if they didn't...
Will all these cities, which have already foolishly forked over so much money to build these ballparks, really be content to have them sit idly, generating no sales taxes and no subsidiary revenues?
This could be their—our—big break—a chance to become a full partner in the game with the players, and grab back a lot of that public money.
I know, I know. Unlikely.
Most of the players are right-wing greedheads, too, and when it comes down to it, well, to quote Elvis Costello: Money talks/ And it's persuasive.
But still. We seem to me to be at a dead end in this country. Everything has got to change—the rip off that professional (and even college) sports are now, along with the rest.
Just getting the thought out there—just getting the idea out there—that there might be a different way is, I think, worth it.
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