XplanaZine

It seems to me that people are becoming more and more interested in what’s going on outside the ballpark than inside.

Baseball has always been the most popular and oldest all-American sport. Is its tradition being compromised?

Try this: When watching a baseball game on television count how many fans you see in the crowd using their cell phones. Last weekend, I noticed more people in the crowd squawking on their cell phones than eating hot dogs or peanuts. It’s shocking and as a matter of fact, it’s getting out of hand. Not for the people watching the game on their local network, but for the loyal fans at the game.

Whether it’s calling your mother to tell her that the camera is on you (”Look mom, I’m on TV!”) or yelling at the person on the other line because you can’t hear him over the screaming cell phone user next to you, more and more Americans are wasting their time at baseball games by absorbing themselves in their cell phones.

At Fenway Park, ushers are consistently asking crowd members to sustain their use of cell phones as it is a distraction to others in their section. Families at Wrigley Field are most concerned about watching Kerry Wood pitch the third out or Sammy Sosa hit his five -billionth home run. They don’t want the person in front of them screaming on their cell phone because they can’t hear the person on the other end.

I’m a nostalgic person. When I remember baseball games, I reminisce of bringing my binoculars all the way up to the bleacher seats and staring at Mark Grace on first base when I was 12 years old. There was a vibrant hum amongst the crowd with the occasional cheer when Ryne Sandberg hit a double. Once in a while, you got the heckler. You know, the guy who always ranted and raved at each player on the other team as if they could actually hear him. Today, hecklers aren’t the only loud ones in the crowd; they’ve been overridden with, “I can’t hear you!”

Consider being in a movie theater or a classroom and constantly listening to cell phones go off around you. It’s tacky and rude. Teachers have banned cell phones from classrooms and movie theaters play a short commercial about turning your cell phone off to avoid distraction from the presentation.

Should we use the same cell phone rules of courtesy in the ball park?

I wouldn’t go this far at the ballpark just yet, but users should be aware that they may be a nuisance to other serious sports fans watching the game. Having a cell phone seating section would be out of the picture. Maybe a general consideration should be to step out of the seating areas to use your cell phone?

Call me a baseball snob if you want. Just understand that I’m not intending to come down on the value of communication or the progression of personal technologies, I just think that as a newly-emerged cell phone nation we are becoming too absorbed in our digital devices. Proposing the question, “Have we gone too far?” is important to our tech-centric culture to keep us in check with our daily human (not technological) experiences.