BIG, BIGGER....
When does “big” become “too big?”
We have learned a great deal about that problem in recent years especially as it applies to bay windows, beer bellies and real-life bustles, bosoms, biceps and mouths. Does “big” make any of them better? We have even come to question the art of building bigger and higher buildings.
In view of the fact that the United States, for many years now, been able to qualify about having the tallest building in the world, or the tallest “man-made structure” in the world, a great deal of interest in such records. Malaysia has the tallest but buildings in the world; Canada has the tallest man-made structure on Earth, but only a chronic joy-killer would even brings the subject up for general discussion.
There remains , however, one area in which I think the United State has a strong lead on having the big, bigger or biggest or whatever - and that is in the huge throngs of humanity seen attending sports events. Our spectator sports displays pull fifty thousand people together in on spot for hours and we, thus far, at least, manage to keep most of them alive and reasonably well. Sooner or later – and, I am afraid it will prove to be sooner – we are going to find we have run out of stadium space in which to stuff ever-growing groups of spectators!
What is all that going to do to spectator sports as we know them today?
If we continue present trends, before too long, in order to actually attend a favorite sport event to witness it first-hand will find themselves seated somewhere in the adjoining county. Even now we find people habitually lugging radios, TV sets, hand-held computers and kindred devices, binoculars and cell phones with them. The often find they are so far from the arena, stage, ring, field, court, track or other playing area that they need assistance to keep in touch with what is going on “down” or “over” there at the event they have paid handsomely to see.
Then, as dusk arrives, falls, and the rumor spreads quickly that the game is “over” down or over there; a few bring out electronic directional finding gear for active use. If they are lucky they might get back to where they had to park their car before nightfall sets in solidly with seasonal blasts of cold wind and icy snow.
I would be tempted to vote against anyone who tells me that the steadily increased costs of attending sporting events is going to cut down on the number of those actually attending. It doesn't seem to have worked that way up to this time. Some once held that, first radio; then TV coverage would cut crowds. They didn't. They enhanced them.
We had a “Shaky Side” Series this year so crowds were said to be smaller, but the stands appeared to be full night after night just as were at the ”Subway Series” games in New York. Look at the 49,000 fans in the stands at NASA race and think of them as paying $30.00 per head just to be there. I use that price because I heard it being hawked as a “bargain” price for a particular race. A friend of mine who, occasionally, likes to go a big league game a hundred and fifty miles away from our home, told me that me that a man, his wife and two kids better have at least two hundred loose dollars handy.
Can organized sports outgrow the space we have for it?
I once heard a member of the Congress of the United States say which I consider to be one of the brightest quotes I have heard from august body: “America,” he said “ has an almost criminal devotion to bigness!”
A.L.M. November 2, 2002 [c645wd]
