I've been around awhile and a sports fan since about the age of six. I remember when I was a kid living just outside of Chicago, I'd ask my mom during the summer if she'd toss me a few bucks to go to the Cubs game that day. She'd relent and give me like ten dollars and tell me to give her back what was leftover.
A few friends and I would then take the EL for .40 cents to the game, with a .20 transfer to get us back home. Then we'd walk a couple of blocks from the EL station to Wrigley Field where we would buy a bleacher ticket for $4.00 dollars and head inside. Sometime during the game, I'd buy a $1.25 hot dog, and another buck or so for a bag of chips and a soft drink. Meanwhile, my friends and I would be digging on the game and the whole atmosphere of it all before we eventually headed back home with our .20 cent transfer pass.
So for about $7.50 we had a whole day, and I could still give my mom some change back.
Somewhere along the line, sports in America started slowly becoming this more upper middle class thing in terms of the live experience, which it never really was when I was growing up. It started becoming this chic thing, less a working class thing, at least in most of the major metro areas. Like so many things in America now, you feel that the haves are separating themselves more and more from the less haves or have nots.
