If You Think Baseball is Dying – Go To Dayton

It has become conventional wisdom among those doyens of sport to believe that football has overtaken baseball and become “The National Pastime.” 

Well, if you are one of those experts, I suggest this: go to Dayton.

Why? Well, first of all, Dayton is a wonderful place – in many ways the best of what America is supposed to be. But when people think of Dayton, they may think of the Wright Brothers (fascinating museum there, by the way) or the University (beautiful campus) but they would not think of baseball. So, what does Dayton, Ohio have to do with disproving baseball’s supposed demise? 

Bear with me. Here’s what.

My wife and I were in Dayton this past week. We were visiting some very special friends (and my most loyal readers) who live there. Our friends wanted to show us the place. In their car as they drove us home from the airport, they told us that the next day they would be taking us to a baseball game. Now, I’m an avid baseball fan and have been since my mother’s water burst. The idea that we would be going to a game was great news to me. Instantly, my brain waves were lighting up with possibilities. Dayton is not far from Cincinnati. Maybe we were going to a Reds game. Cleveland is further but I’d be happy to ride a little longer to see the Guardians. However, I was quickly disabused of any of those possibilities when the news about going to a game was immediately followed by the game that it would be. 

The game was going to be between the Dayton Dragons and the Wisconsin Timber Rattlers.

Now I’m such a rabid baseball fan that, while I would have preferred something like what I had imagined, this news did not really disappoint me. True, God knows who these guys were. I had never heard of them, and I thought I had at least heard of any team of consequence. Then my friends told me. They were a High-A minor league team. That’s the next to lowest minor league category, three steps away from the majors.

But I’ll watch any baseball played anywhere, and I’ll enjoy it. So, I fully expected to enjoy the battle between the Dragons and the Timber Rattlers. And that would be even if I had to sit on an old wooden bench and watch a quality of players who might, if lucky, make a high-school team. I told my friends that that I was looking forward to it, and I meant it.

As it turned out, I had a lot to look forward to.

It was instantly clear that the Dayton Dragons are not just any rag-tag group of wannabes. When we pulled into the area where the team plays, I was at first impressed to see what looked like a field that was at least proper enough to have lights. But then we got closer. This was some place! This was a stadium. Not Dodger Stadium, but a goodness-to-gracious stadium nonetheless. It is called, “Day Air Ballpark” – apparently sponsored by a corporation just like the big-time places are. And for good reason. This was an extraordinary place – a giant color-splashed scoreboard that flashed real time videos and stats; exploding fireworks and light shows whenever the Dragons hit a home run – all of that stuff. It was a suitable location to hold any spectacle. The Romans would have been proud to have killed Christians in it. 

What I saw next was even more eye-opening. Crowds. Not Simon and Garfunkel in Central Park crowds, but real crowds. All couldn’t wait to get inside this arena, Day Air Ballpark. The place houses 8,000 fan and it was packed. That’s when my friend clued me in. A few years back, the Dayton Dragons set the record for most consecutive sellouts by a professional sports team – 815. I looked it up. That means that they broke the prior record held by the Portland Trail Blazers of the NBA. Once I took my seat (and very good seats my friends had bought for us) I looked around. To my eye, this was going to be another one of those sellouts. 

And the ticket holders weren’t there by accident. These were died in the wool Dayton Dragon fans. They were wearing Dayton Dragon shirts, and Dayton Dragon hats and holding up Dayton Dragon signs. As do fans everywhere, this Dayton Dragon crowd wanted nothing more than to plaster themselves with the logo of their obsession. And Dragon management made it very easy for them to fulfill that desire. The well-stocked and good-sized Dragon Merchandise Shop was unavoidably located right next to the Main Gate where you came in and went out.

And most impressive of all, a lot of those logo-laden folks were kids. These kids were staring out at the Dragons with intense idolatry. When Jose Acuna – a 23 year-old trying to find his path to his big-league dream – emerged from the Dragon dugout, the kids exulted. The stands being so close to the field, the kids’ idols essentially walked among them. They were no less excited about this than I had been many decades ago when I stood at the railing of Yankee Stadium and saw Mickey Mantle. 

But baseball wasn’t the only thing that excited the kids. Between every inning management offered more entertainment. Sometimes it was a dancing competition. Sometimes it was a race. Once it was a race between infants whose parents instilled a life-long fear of crowds in their offspring by placing them on the field only to be surrounded by cheers and jeers as they crawled and cried. In between one of the innings they actually brought out a group of army recruits and had them sworn into service right there in front of us all.

The crowd loved all of this, but what the crowd loved most of all was the baseball. These guys were good. Really good. This was High-A remember. None of the players in front of us were even close to sniffing a major league team. But they were really good. There was a time not too long ago in the big leagues when pitchers who could throw 95 miles per hour or higher were considered freakily elite. Well, every pitcher on the Dragons and the Timber Rattlers could now do that. And it didn’t bother the hitters any. They were good, too. We saw a few home runs, one of which left the entire stadium. And this was the quality of play three steps below the majors! Baseball players obviously haven’t listened to the critics of their game. They just keep getting better. No wonder Dayton loves them.

Finally, after the game, I saw a long, serpentine line of fans who were waiting to get autographs from their heroes. Most were kids, but there were a lot of adults, too. Many of the players they now longed to see had the year before probably been standing in lines very much like this. But they were now Dragons. They were now professional ballplayers and to those in this line, they were now stars.

So, baseball is dead, huh? So, football has taken over? Well, those who think that – those who have demoted baseball to second place; those who keep saying that baseball has lost its allure, especially for the young – to those people I only have this to say: go to Dayton.