A “baseball hangover” isn’t what happens to an adult who downed a few $9 brews at the ballpark. It’s the distant look of sleep deprivation in the eyes of a kid struggling through ninth-grade English after staying up until 10:15 watching a typical game the night before.
The St. Louis Cardinals are making a small effort to minimize those hangovers. Home games on school nights will start half an hour earlier, with the first pitch at 6:45 instead of the traditional 7:15. This means kids who stay up for all nine innings will get to bed before 10 p.m. most games, and little sluggers may get to see more than the top two frames.
The Cards have realized they need kids as fans.
This follows the Baltimore Orioles “Kids Cheer Free” promotion, where parents can bring two kids at no charge for each upper-deck ticket they buy to most games.
This is an about-face for major sports entities, most of which have been ignoring kids in pursuit of more TV ad money.
For instance, why did the NCAA championship game end a couple of minutes before midnight, Eastern time, on April 8? Because NCAA and CBS had the teams tip off at 9:20. That allows for prime-time ad rates in all four time zones of the Lower 48 states.
Such post-9 p.m. start times are common in postseason baseball. The normal first pitch in October is 8 p.m. With the increased pitching changes of playoff ball, you need to stay up until near midnight to catch a whole game. That means most kids can’t do it, which means fewer kids grow up as baseball fans.
It’s no wonder the average MLB fan is about 60 years old. Fewer kids watch baseball than did a decade ago, and even fewer play it. By chasing short-term ad revenue, baseball — like other major sports — has been selling its seed corn.
The Cards and Orioles have taken steps to lure children back into fandom, on the radical notion that perhaps games are for kids.
