Baseball still needs autos to draw crowds
By STEVE SNIDER
UPI Sports Writer
The kids in our town were about 50-50 for the St. Louis Cardinals and Chicago Cubs back in those happy-go-lucky years before the Great Depression.
Chicago was up the railroad tracks about 150 miles in one direction and St. Louis was 150 miles south. The kids on the north side of town went big for the Cubs. The south belonged to the Cardinals. We never thought much at all about the White Sox or the Browns.
The older folks felt about that way, too, and any time they got up parties to drive to a weekend ball game the caravans usually went off in opposite
10 KANSAN Jly.29 1969
directions. Naturally, if the Cubs were at St. Louis or the Cards at Chicago, the traffic was all one-way.
Those were exciting adventures, believe me, and not just because of big league baseball. Asking an automobile to make a 300-mile round trip in those days wasn't exactly like planning a trip to the moon in today's hardware but it was daring stuff, at that.
I suppose the people back there now are whizzing up or down Route 66 in their shiny new cars with nothing much on their minds except baseball—or maybe a place to park when they get there.
Cars are vital to baseball attendance and that's a fact you tend to forget after a spell in New York where the subways deliver the most customers in masses of happy humanity.
But the other day a thoughtful survey of attendance at Baltimore pointed up that while the Orioles have been doing okay they're still losing some fringe auto traffic to the Braves since that franchise switch from Milwaukee to Atlanta.
The survey covered the general picture from 1966 when the Braves landed in Atlanta. This year there could be some excuses. The Orioles had a runaway going in their division from early in the season while the Braves were close all the way in the National League's West.
But it's worth noting Baltimore's top crowd up to All Star time was 39,789 for Detroit on June 27 and the low was 2,337 for Cleveland April 14. Atlanta's high was 46,414 for a San Francisco doubleheader June 22 and the low was 5,854 for San Diego on May 1.
Atlanta, a team that really belongs to the South, is in an enviable position but it's possible some errors have been made in laying out the current baseball map.
Charley Finley was in a hurry to move his Athletics from Kansas City to Oakland, in an area pioneered by the San Francisco Giants, but the results hardly have been spectacular.
The California Angels of the American League and the new San Diego team in the National, both bucking Dodger competition, are struggling.
Meanwhile, the Boston Red Sox,
with no competition, are flying.
The Red Sox, who have been adopted by their entire-auto-driving area and perhaps should be known as "the New England Red Sox," recently became the first team in the majors to go
over the million mark in home attendance.
Still, the subway isn't all that bad. Top crowd in the majors was 60,096 at Yankee Stadium for the White Sox on June 8 and top for the National League was 59,083 at Shea Stadium as the Mets played host to the Cubs July 9.
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