Fifty Years of Change: The Minor Leagues, Then and Now; or, The Minor Leagues, Fifty Years On

Keynote Address to the Twenty-First Annual nine Spring-Training Conference, March 16, 2014

It is exactly fifty years since I signed a contract with the Detroit Tigers and went off to play minor-league baseball, breaking in with the Duluth Dukes in the Northern League. It was 1965, the nadir of minor-league baseball’s popularity: the number of leagues (15) and teams (118) had reached a historic low. In 1950, there had been four times as many leagues and franchises. The decline in minor-league baseball has been attributed to Americans moving to the suburbs, away from downtown ballparks, and to the advent of window air conditioners. The latter brought indoor relief in the summer and enabled families to stay at home to watch in comfort major-league baseball on their new television sets.

Recently I revisited some of the five teams I had played for in my brief career and, as an anthropologist, observed how the minor leagues and their ballplayers have changed. Some of what I say here also applies to the major leagues.

Ball games take a lot longer to play today. About a half hour more, on average. Gone are four-man pitching rotations and pitchers who expect go the distance. Mostly gone are hitters choking up with two strikes, two-hour games, and players wearing stirrup socks and showing their white “sanitaries.” In the stands, there are far fewer fans scoring the game, with iPhones having taken the place of scorecards.

But by far, the biggest change is in the ballparks themselves. There isn’t any area of minor-league baseball that has seen greater improvement; and as we will see, not all these improvements are better. Unlike in the 1960s, today’s stadiums, even in rookie ball, have manicured fields, indoor batting cages, electronic scoreboards, and spacious clubhouses with all sorts of creature comforts. Today’s ballparks also have wide concourses, a second tier of seating with suites, and clubhouse stores selling team memorabilia.

Minor-league baseball has become wildly popular, with attendance in most leagues triple or quadruple what it had been in the sixties. For example, teams that I played for in the Northern League, New York–Penn League, Florida State League, and Carolina League, which averaged 450 to 650 fans per night in the 1960s, now average 2,000 to 3,500 daily fans.¹ In 2013, five teams in the low Class A New York–Penn League averaged more than 4,000 fans per game, whereas, in 1965, only one team (Binghamton) averaged 1,000 fans per game or better.

Why the huge increase? Many say it began with the 1994 major-league players’ strike when many fans were forced to turn to minor-minor ball, liked what they saw, and stayed on. But prior to the strike, interest had already been growing, due to the 1988 blockbuster film Bull Durham and to clever marketing in which a new generation of minor-league owners and general managers offered a new product at the ballpark: Vaudeville. Today, it is not just baseball that entertains ballpark spectators. Between innings, there are now mascots, zany stunts like kids racing mascots around the bases or girls dancing on the dugout roofs, air guns shooting T-shirts into the crowds, noise-making cheer bats, and electronic scoreboards with quizzes and fancy video displays. And beyond the playing field and beneath the stands are more amusements—speed pitch, T-ball, and picnic areas. As if that were not enough, there are nearly nightly giveaways—bobbleheads, seat cushions, key chains, caps, and so forth. These sideshow, carnivalesque attractions have broadened the appeal of minor-league baseball. People with only minimal interest in the game can now enjoy an evening at the ballpark. For me, though, a downside of the ballpark experience today is the loud music, making ballparks less of a place for conversation. The opportunities they once provided for fathers or mothers and sons or daughters to talk and connect—the stuff of ballpark folklore—have been diminished.

The new material...