Dear Bud

I'm not sure why this is tough for you to understand, but listen up. Baseball is not at the height of its popularity. Those "shattered" attendance records? They have nothing to do with how many people are actually going to the games and everything to do with corporate season tickets. Corporations don't buy season tickets because they like baseball; they buy them to beer and hotdog their clients. In other words, it's something for their clients to do.

Bud, if you counted the actual attendance - you know, the big butts in the seats - you would realize that baseball is not increasing in popularity. It's actually the reverse of that. Americans think baseball is "boring."

I was at a Nationals game this year in which not more than 10,000 people were there, yet the announced attendance was 25K+. I remember this game in particular because there was a strange echo bouncing around the emptiness of the stadium. I went to several other games where actual attendance was about half of what was announced.

Please start living in reality before you destroy baseball. If you don't do something to increase the popularity of the game and change public perception that baseball is a "boring" sport, then twenty or thirty years from now, even season tickets won't be enough to save the game.
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