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Someone Else

Jerry Cohen

Someone Else

Jerry Cohen

What turns me off so much is the need to monetize everything to the degree that they do because of the economics of baseball these days. It's just really overwhelming sometimes to me the amount of money they try to squeeze out of you at every turn and it's somewhat offensive. I'm not a big Disney fan, for example, just because it's a giant corporate experience for me. It's not authentic. That's my personal take and that's what happened to baseball at the Major League level to a large degree. I understand why. They have to pay players millions of dollars now, which wasn't true in the good old days, but at the same time it's sort of harmed …

You talk about distractions. That's a big part of my lack of enjoyment of game nowadays. There's so many distractions. In some parks it's like they're apologizing for the fact that there's a baseball game going on by having raucous music, contests, and things like that. None of those things interests me at all. I find them actually quite irritating. I don't know what to say. Baseball is no longer the cultural touchstone that it once was. It now has to compete with many other things for the dollar and therefore it is pushed into doing things that don't necessarily enhance the experience for a more traditional fan like myself.

Someone Else

Jerry Cohen

Not anymore because they're so afraid you'll get distracted and leave if your senses aren't bombarded every second of the time you're there. They won't let you alone with your own thoughts, I guess is my problem. Whereas the great thing about baseball used to be the contemplative nature of it, like you said. There was a little gap between innings. You could sit there with your scorecard and you could chat with the person you're with about what happened in the last half inning. That's very difficult if not impossible at many parks today. I say it's akin to video games. I don't like video games. I don't like to have my senses stimulated by a screen and by a bunch of noise every five seconds, but that is the atmosphere that a lot of people grow up in these days, and therefore when they go to a baseball game I think the ownership's marketing team is a little bit afraid to let people alone with their thoughts for any amount of time.

Someone Else

Jerry Cohen

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