Auggie, the baseball work stoppage, like all such pro-sports events, was a LOCKOUT by the owners ~ NOT a strike by the players. True, both sides always share responsibility for their failure to successfully negotiate, but it's the owners who (a) offer those huge contracts to begin with and (b) use their fat-cat connections to influence media coverage of their labor-relations skullduggery.

Going to pro-sports games is ridiculously expensive, indeed, but I still enjoy following the teams to which I've become attached, almost entirely via TV and the print media.

The wife and I have been able to take in a few NBA games thanks to friends/acquaintances who don't use their season tickets every time. We can just about afford the $10 parking, the only expense involved in using a freebee ticket, and rarely if ever buy any of the overpriced food and drink. But we do enjoy watching the game, especially from the nice close-up seats we've been able to occupy.

I am amazed at the high-rollers sitting all around us, who are spending $100 or more per game for a pair of tickets, and then don't even watch the game closely, they're so busy running back and forth to the concession stand. The assholes in the very front row are the most unbelievable, obviously more interested in being seen than in seeing any basketball action, as they're waited on by the "in-seat service" staff, scarfing down $10 cocktails and $12 sushi platters.

At a baseball game, at least, the status-conscious fools are perched behind the real fans in their "luxury suites," so the rest of us can concentrate on the field without craning our necks to see around the high-roller patrons and their servants as they run back and forth to fetch drinks and snacks.