The Season of Discontent : Soured by Soaring Salaries and Teams That Don’t Care About Their Fans, Many in the Bleachers Are Ready to Turn Out the Lights and Go Home

In the shadow of Fenway Park, behind the counter of an old souvenir store, Pete Daloya mutters to himself and reads the morning sports section.

There’s bad news from Detroit, where the Red Sox lost again. But that’s not what’s eating him today.

“These players we got now, they’re a bunch of bums,” says the old man, slapping his paper down. “And the owners aren’t much better. All I hear is money, money, money. So I just can’t get excited about baseball these days.”

It sure was different 42 summers ago, when Daloya opened the shop across from Boston’s historic ballpark. Guys like Ted Williams were chasing fly balls in the emerald-green grass, he says, and it didn’t cost $100 to bring the wife and kids to the park. But the grand old game just ain’t the same.

Ask Rob Dumond, a Red Sox die-hard sitting behind first base at Fenway. He’s been driving down to the park from New Hampshire for years, but lately he asks himself why. Maybe it’s because the fans don’t seem to count anymore.

“I remember when players and owners felt a responsibility to the customers,” he says, watching kids scurry after foul balls. “We have a lot of unemployment up here, and some guys would kill for a $6-an-hour job. How do you relate to a pitcher who whines on TV about his $2-million salary?”

On a hot September night, the voices of Fenway bounce off the walls and seats like hard line drives. But they’re hardly unique. From Dodger Stadium to Yankee Stadium, fans have begun to sour on the national pastime. For them, 1992 has been a summer of discontent--a time when baseball seems more corporate and cutthroat than ever. And the worst may be yet to come.

In some ways, the unhappiness with baseball mirrors Americans’ disgust with Washington politics. Despite massive public relations campaigns by both institutions, there is widespread skepticism about their integrity--and fears that neither cares about the concerns of everyday people. In Mudville, as on Main Street, there is no joy, and the customers have begun to turn off.

“So many people who love baseball feel frustrated, just like they do with government,” says Tom Heitz, the librarian at the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, N.Y. “There’s a powerlessness brought on by dismay over events that one cannot control. And the feeling is growing. Baseball can’t ignore such feelings, because paying customers are the lifeblood of the game.”

In Los Angeles, the Boys of Bummer are looking at a last-place finish, and there’s a nagging sense that the Dodgers’ Blues have just begun. Up north, the San Francisco Giants may be packing their bags for St. Petersburg, Fla., and a great north-south rivalry could soon become a memory. It’s the same story in other cities: Baseball has been dominated by battles over money and TV revenues this summer, and the game itself seems beside the point.

Fueled by the recession, attendance is down in all but a handful of ballparks. Television ratings for major league baseball also have dipped, and even though there are two down-to-the-wire pennant races this September, the national media seem distracted, if not bored. The threat of a spring-training lockout by club owners next year has cast a further pall, and some customers are bracing themselves for the possibility of no baseball at all in 1993.

To be sure, angry fans are nothing new. During the last 100 years, baseball has been criticized for corrupt management, greedy players and dubious innovations, like Astroturf. But there was always a sense that Americans would forgive and forget. Now, some observers say, that might be wishful thinking.

These days, baseball VIPs are heavy into damage control, like a political campaign that’s plummeting in the polls. They recently hired Winner-Wagner, a Los Angeles public relations firm, to spiff up their image and convince the public they care. But it won’t be easy. The recent forced resignation of Commissioner Fay Vincent--a man who had the audacity to equate the fans’ best interests with those of the owners--has angered large numbers of the faithful.

Sometimes, you can win them over by turning back the clock. George Bush tried that with his Harry Truman act but dropped it in a hurry after lousy reviews. In baseball, however, nostalgia has always been a gold mine. U.S. moviegoers spent $100 million this summer to see “A League of Their Own,” a historically accurate film about women baseball players during World War II.

Madonna wasn’t the only draw: The characters in the movie displayed a decency, teamwork and respect for fans that’s missing from the game today. More important, it reminded folks that cities used to truly identify with teams.

“It may sound like a cliche, but there was a sense of small-town community in those women’s games,” says Lois Browne, a Toronto author who wrote “The Girls of Summer,” a history of the short-lived All-American Girls Professional Baseball League. “People are hungry for that, especially in a game which is supposed to take their minds off their troubles. They want that purity back.”

In a similar vein, baseball writer Roger Angell devoted a New Yorker essay last month to the struggles of a plucky minor-league club. “I wasn’t running away from baseball,” he wrote. “Only from modern major-league ball . . . in full flight from Diamond-Vision commercials, four-hour games, ill-tempered crowds, skulking tabloid sports tales, slump-haunted millionaires (and) another vapid evening of game-to-game channel switching.”

All the things, in other words, that rob big-time baseball of its human touch. For some critics, that spells danger ahead.

“Who was acting in the fans’ best interests when the owners got rid of Fay Vincent?” asks Andrew Zimbalist, an economics professor at Smith College who recently wrote “Baseball and Billions,” a savvy analysis of the game’s financial problems.

“It was all done for the bottom line, like it always is in baseball,” he continues. “And you have to ask, how long can the sport go on like this? It’s been five years since a World Series game was played in the afternoon. The old traditions are disappearing, and somewhere along the line you lose people.”

But not for long, according to some experts. Attendance could bounce back next season, fans could be swept up in pennant races, and all this talk about alienation and Angst would end, says historian David Voigt.

Nearly 100 years ago, he points out, Albert G. Spalding, a founder of the National League, blasted the audacity of some players for demanding a $3,500 annual salary. In a program guidebook for the 1890 season, Spalding said the public would turn its back on the game if athletes made so much money.

“Fans love to complain,” adds Voigt, who has published three volumes of a history of the sport and is finishing up Volume 4. “You’ve always had these complaints about greedy owners and indifferent ballplayers. But you’ve never seen a period when they were totally turned off to the game.”

Indeed, Voigt says the hand-wringing by some fans over baseball’s vanished Golden Era is silly, because major league baseball was never that pure.

“It was always business, and business big-time,” he notes. “This romantic idea that old-time players were attached to their local teams is wrong, because most of these guys weren’t homeboys. They were mercenaries, and they moved around just like free agents do today. There was no enduring loyalty.”

For the men, perhaps. But don’t talk about loyalty to Lavonne (Pepper) Paire Davis. Born in Los Angeles, she was one of the ballplayers portrayed in “A League of Their Own,” and she misses the good old days.

The stocky redhead, now 68, joined the women’s league after her 18th birthday and, during a 10-year career, played shortstop, catcher and pitcher for the Ft. Wayne Daisies, the Racine Belles and the Grand Rapids Chicks. Brash and temperamental, she once cold-cocked an umpire who called her out on a close play at second. A hard-driving player who boasted that she had “a boyfriend in every port,” Davis once pitched the first game of a doubleheader and caught the nightcap.

“Won ‘em both,” she says. “Wasn’t even close.”

Today, Paire lives in Van Nuys and keeps in close touch with former colleagues, many of whom live in Southern California. She also laughs at major league ballplayers who are forever whining about aches and pains.

“I understand why fans get turned off by baseball, because a lot of these guys are kinda soft,” she says. “For us, there was no complaining. We played hurt, we played every day, and there were lots of times when we could--and did--beat all-male teams. We gave it 100%. And you don’t see that anymore.”

To prove her point, Paire, sings a song she recently penned, sung to a familiar tune:

Take me out of the ballgame

I don’t think I can play

I’ve got a headache and hangnail, too

What’s more, I think I’ve come down with the flu

So it’s take me out of the ballgame

If we don’t win it’s a shame

But I’ll make one, two, three million a year

At the old ballgame

It’s enough to make you eat your score card, which is exactly what Rob Dumond feels like doing as he watches the Red Sox stumble through another game back at Fenway Park. It’s almost October, his team is in last place and a long season is just about over. Time to forget and catch a football game or two. Isn’t there an election coming up? On second thought, back to football.

“I’m losing interest fast,” Dumond complains. “All my life I’ve played baseball. But this stuff out here, this isn’t the game I remember.”

Maybe the best thing to do is stand up and tell the big shots how you feel. As Dumond speaks, a fan three rows behind him suddenly jumps to his feet. In a booming voice, he starts shouting at Red Sox first baseman Steve Lyons, just like some heckler at a political rally.

The fan, Jim Flesock, explains that Lyons once embarrassed himself on national TV when he slid into first base and, forgetting where he was, pulled down his pants to pour out some dirt. Flesock still remembers, and his tirade comes straight from the heart--as if he were speaking for fans everywhere:

“Yo, psycho!” he yells, as Lyons crouches at first, oblivious to the noise. “I’m talking to YOU, psycho! I pay money to see YOU? For THIS?”