Baseball

English 1101

21 October 2013

Baseball…Then and Now

Baseball is known to be America’s game, and it is our national pastime. Baseball is known as a “haunted game”. People see how players like Alex Rodriguez, Prince Fielder, Dustin Pedroia, Cal Ripken Jr., and Barry Bonds chase records and accomplishments that were set by baseballs legendary ghosts of the past like Babe Ruth, Ty Cobb, Mickey Mantle, Cy Young, and Joe Dimaggio—just to name a few. So many outstanding records were set in the early years of baseball. To this day, some of the records have been broken but some still stand. Even though the game is still fundamentally the same as it was over two hundred years ago, is it still the game it was back then? Does the same passion still live inside the players? Over the many years of existence the game has gone through substantial changes as well as continued to maintain some similarities. Everything from stadiums, contracts, and players has changed immensely but the dark sides of the game have not.

The stadiums of yesteryear are by far no match for the stadiums of today. For instance, the New York Yankees first home was called the Polo Grounds. The stadium sat only sixteen thousand fans and was built in 1911 for a mere $300,000 (“Ballparks of Baseball”). Yankee Stadium is the newest home to the Yankees. This modern marvel has a capacity just over 52,000 and was built in 2009 for a staggering $1.6 billion dollars (“Ballparks of Baseball”). As well as the huge difference in size, the amenities are different. The Polo Grounds had a couple food stands for hot dogs, peanuts, and popcorn along with more food vendors. Yankee Stadium has a Hard Rock Café, countless food counters with various different foods, a steakhouse, food court, martini bar (“Ballparks of Baseball”). Along with the food counters there and numerous food vendors working all the home games. The vendors sell everything from hotdogs, peanuts, popcorn, beer, pretzels, and cotton candy to Yankee...