Is Anybody Out There Listening to the Fans?

I wish someone would do a survey of major league fans and see how we feel. I have had season tickets to Dodger games for 25 years. I go for hot dogs, peanuts, Vin Scully on the radio and Nancy Bea Hefley on the organ. The players come and go and I don’t really care much who’s out there.

The reason I would like a survey is that the way I feel is the way everyone I know feels. And that is, fire them! All of them. Jerks like Barry Bonds along with class acts like Shawn Green. All of them. Bring up triple-A players, not as “replacement players” but as permanent major leaguers.

Cut parking to $2. Cut food and ticket prices in half. Pay the players $100,000 a year. How many of you reading this would love to make a hundred grand playing a game six months out of 12?

Bring back competitive balance to our great game. Do the survey. I’m not alone.

Doug Dunlap

Valencia

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I don’t understand it. Seven million people in the country are unemployed and Bud Selig still has a job. This guy is overbearing and arrogant, is a big dud in front of a microphone, and seems to be pushing the players to strike.

Baseball has to be the worst-run business in America. Thirty owners each have their own agenda, and all Selig can do is declare a tie in the All-Star game.

Can anyone save America’s national pastime?

Ralph S. Brax

Lancaster

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When people ask why team owners voted to oust Fay Vincent--as honorable and wise a man to ever serve as baseball commissioner--and hired the hapless, unprincipled Bud Selig to replace him, all they have to do is look at today’s ownership.

Gone are the traditional family-run teams, dedicated to long-term stability and community service. Replacing them is a new breed of “sultans of commerce,” who purchase teams as ego trips or investments and then, after accruing a little equity, strip them, move them or dump them on the market (anyone recall the Florida Marlins?).

Today’s owners don’t want a commissioner like Vincent, whose foremost concern was maintaining the integrity of baseball; they want a sycophant like Selig, a fellow capitalist (auto dealerships) and fellow owner (Milwaukee Brewers) who can be relied upon not to rock the boat. Such a pity.

David Macaray

Rowland Heights

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If Bud Selig and Don Fehr lead baseball into another strike/lockout/work stoppage, David Stern should consider moving the NBA to an April-October season.

Just think, David, no battling the NFL, NHL or college basketball for fans, advertising dollars or broadcast time; kids will be out of school during the summer months, thus making them and their families even more potential customers; and the air-conditioned arenas will be places people will want to go to during the hot summer.

The NBA players should like it, since they’d now get New Year’s, Thanksgiving and Christmas off with their families. Let Major League Baseball go by the wayside.

There’s a new national pastime and it’s called the NBA.

Patrick Lewis

Alta Loma

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In the negotiations for a better, wealthier life for the baseball players and their owners, who is negotiating for the livelihood of the people who sell the hot dogs, hamburgers, peanuts, parking, protection, groundskeepers, etc.?

What about each player and each owner ponying up a small piece of their last week’s salary so these people can exist while the chosen ones enjoy their unearned vacations at their estates and summer places? Maybe it would be a small incentive to rethink our pleasures for those of us who are simply disgusted with the unfairness of the great American game.

Anybody for soccer?

Paul Helmick

Granada Hills

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As usual, Ross Newhan [July 24] writes a thoughtful and informative article on baseball’s current financial situation. The remarkable thing, however, is the accompanying photo. I find it astonishing that someone, somewhere in America, actually wants Bud Selig’s autograph on a baseball!

Evan Puziss

Mar Vista