Baseball should play catch with young fans

A year ago, Joey Boyd of Mount Pleasant wanted to introduce his 4-year-old son to baseball, just as his father had introduced him to the game. When Boyd was a young boy, his father signed him up for the Detroit Tigers fan club. A few days later Boyd received a baseball card of Tiger pitcher Mark Fidrych and a Detroit T-shirt.

It didn't matter that Fidrych was a one-season wonder or that the T-shirt was three sizes too big.

"I couldn't have cared less," Boyd said. "I was hooked on baseball."

Chris Lamb

As Boyd grew up, his love for baseball didn't change — though, at some point, he exchanged his Tigers T-shirt for New York Yankees pinstripes.

He wanted to find a team for his son, William. He learned, however, that the Yankees charged an annual fee of $26 — $1 for each of the team's world series championship — for membership in the team's fan club.

Boyd was disappointed, but he shouldn't have been surprised. The Yankees, after all, are the Yankees, where money talks louder than a Bronx cheer. Boyd then searched other teams' Web sites. He found only two teams — the Chicago White Sox and Florida Marlins — that didn't put a price on loyalty.

After Boyd and his son wrote the White Sox and Marlins, Boyd wrote Major League Baseball Commissioner Allan H. "Bud" Selig. Boyd asked Selig to encourage Major League owners to not charge kids who wanted to join a team's fan club.

This, Boyd said, would pay off for baseball because it would draw countless kids into what he called "a wonderful sport."

Selig responded by saying: "I will certainly discuss this matter with the clubs at Major League meetings." He included an autographed baseball. If an autographed baseball from "Bud" Selig can't make a lifelong baseball fan of William Boyd, what can? But there are millions of young boys and girls out there, and Selig is, after all, just one man.

Boyd had hoped that baseball would realize the error of its ways in the last year.

When he recently checked the teams' Web sites, he learned that the membership rates had increased. The Yankees now charge $35. The White Sox and Marlins still offer free memberships to kids.

Selig and team owners probably met during Major League Baseball's All-Star Break Monday through Wednesday. How much time was spent on making lifelong fans of young boys and girls? Probably none.

Selig and owners had more important things on their minds — such as discussing the billions of dollars baseball will receive from television contracts, or the hundreds of millions the game will receive from luxury boxes and naming rights to ballparks.

One can't blame Selig and owners for ignoring 4- and 5-year-olds. Very few kids, after all, can afford luxury boxes. That's just one of the problems with today's kids.

Baseball has seen its popularity drop extensively over the last 20 years.

It's taking a particular hit among younger fans. Young African-Americans, in particular, have all but given up on the national game.

If current trends continue, it's likely that the baseball fan of the future will be a football or a basketball fan. Baseball will continue to lose its grip on America unless it can find a way to play catch with kids.

Why shouldn't teams offer free memberships to kids?

It would be a loss leader for the teams. In exchange for free memberships, teams could win the hearts and minds of young boys and girls. You can't put a price on that.

Chris Lamb is a professor of Communication at the College of Charleston where he teaches a class called, "Myth, Baseball and the Meaning of Life."