Is Baseball Alienating Its Most Loyal Fans?

Mark Stein and Seth Tannenbaum, Westchester residents and authors of new books on the class dynamics in professional baseball, will discuss the long history of club owners catering to affluent spectators and corporate sponsors at the expense of their middle- and working-class fans.

In A League of His Own: A.G. Spalding and the Business of Baseball, Stein shows how National League founder Albert Goodwill Spalding acted to make baseball palatable to the “right” people by blocking beer sales and discount tickets, that he said would attract the “wrong” element. He also invented the private box.
 

In his book, Bleacher Seats and Luxury Suites: Democracy and Division at the Twentieth-Century Ballpark, Tannenbaum illustrates how the class divisions that havealways existed in the purportedly egalitarian sport of baseball have changed over time and how those divisions have shaped Americans’ understanding of the game, urban spaces, and
the nation.