September 15, 2005
Cartwright 1, Marx 0 Posted by Frederic D. Schwarz at 01:05 PM EST Why is there no socialism in the United States? The answer can be found by examining last Monday's Major League Baseball schedule. On Labor Day, only 22 of the 30 Major League teams were in action, and one of those games was a make-up of an earlier rainout. The same thing was true on Memorial Day: Only 10 games scheduled, out of a possible 15. A few decades ago, every team used to play on Memorial Day and Labor Day, often doubleheaders, because the clubs knew those would be among the biggest attendance days of the year. The urban proletariat had a day off, and lots of them spent it at the ballpark. But in today’s baseball calendar, Labor Day is just another Monday, with teams and fans alike often using it for travel. I don’t have any attendance figures for comparison, but a quick scan of the Sunday of Labor Day weekend's box scores (hey, that’s more research than most bloggers ever do) shows that attendance was not much different from what you’d expect on a normal Sunday. Fans can go to a game anytime they want (in fact the great majority of tickets are now purchased in advance, which is another story), but it’s not often that they get a three-day weekend. So just as today’s workers are too busy spending their money to reinforce class solidarity by marching in the Labor Day parade, they also have too many leisure options to spend Labor Day weekend watching baseball. And that’s why there’s no socialism in the United States. P.S. Of course there are plenty of people who are too poor to take a weekend vacation, but these days they’re also too poor to go to a baseball game.
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