Former New York Met Art Shamsky said major league owners were to blame for the recent decline of baseball's popularity in a speech he gave yesterday as part of the week-long Senior Symposium.
Shamsky, a member of the team that won the World Series in 1969, delivered a speech titled "From Worst to First: The Comeback of the 1969 Mets" to an audience of approximately 30 people in 28 Silsby Hall.
"I think baseball today has done what it can to really hurt itself," Shamsky said.
"They do things that are anti-fan," he said, "They need to be fan conscious."
Shamsky pointed out the game played by the New York Yankees in Tuesday's bad weather as an example of fans being neglected.
Despite the sleet and snow, Shamsky said, the game was played because it had sold out. More than 20,000 of the ticket holders, however, did not attend the game because of the foul weather.
Shamsky said the weather on Wednesday was fine for baseball, and more fans would have attended then, if the schedule had not been dictated by economic concerns.
"The common perception of the ball player today is that he's greedy," Shamsky said. He, however, blamed arbitration rather than greed for driving up player salaries.
He also pointed a finger at an intrusive media for alienating fans from the players. "They're so vulnerable," he said of the players, which is why they are sometimes aloof from the fans.
Shamsky also discussed the 1969 Mets, who, he said, were an inspiration during a troublesome period for many Americans.
"We kind of made people feel good about certain things in their lives," he said.
The team, which was founded in 1962, surprised baseball fans everywhere by winning the World Series in 1969, considering their records in previous years.
"People came to the ballpark and had a good time," Shamsky said of the pre-1969 Mets, but fans "expected them to lose and they did what they were expected to do."
"It was just a team that knew how to lose," he added. The difference in the 1969 season was that the team "learned how to win close games."
"In my opinion, not only were we lucky," Shamsky said, "we were terrific."
Shamsky started in the major league playing for the Cincinnati Reds in 1965, but was traded to the Mets in 1968.
"When they told me I was going to the Mets, it was really depressing," Shamsky said, referring to the Mets' reputation as a losing team.
"The reality of it was that it was the best thing that ever happened to me," he said in retrospect.
