OPENING DAY
The game hasn't changed, but what's behind it has. And fans can feel it.
The Game Hasn’t Changed, But What’s Behind It Has. And Fans Can Feel It.
This article is part of Upstream, The Daily Wire’s new home for culture and lifestyle. Real human insight and human stories — from our featured writers to you.***There is something beautiful that exists only on the baseball field and in the stands, and it isn’t the manufactured roar of a billion-dollar stadium or the over-produced bass of a “fan experience” sound system. It’s the sharp, lonely crack of a wooden bat echoing off a wooden grandstand, the low murmur of men in lawn chairs, and a scorecard being filled out by hand.On Opening Day this year, Americans have a deep cultural hunger for the authentic, the local, the rugged. You see it in the revival of traditional crafts and in the renaissance of farming and homesteading. And yet, our national pastime is being stripped of its poetry by the cold, clinical hand of modern finance. In recent years, the business of baseball has succumbed to a particularly modern form of madness: the cult of efficiency.Major League Baseball has shuttered and unaffiliated dozens of minor league affiliates, cutting the cord on communities that had...
