Skyrocketing ballpark prices

In the Major League Baseball official video, "Baseball in the 70s", an entire segment is dedicated to rising player salaries. That is still the case. The league mininum salary is now a paltry $327,500 for players. But in the video, the comment is also made that it is important to keep baseball the "best buy in professional sports."

While baseball tickets may still on average be the lowest per game, baseball is a unique sport in that the season is so long that even a casual fan may take in 20 games during a season. At $30-50 per seat, that's quite a chunk out of the wallet. Of course, the teams also get fans on concessions, whose prices seem such a turnoff anymore that I rarely buy them. (That, in my view, is sad.) Marge Schott used to offer the $1 hot dogs in Cincinnati, but those are a distant memory now as $4.00 is the cheapest sausage you can get now.

Of course, baseball has also done away with most on-field promotions and, in many people's opinions, lost some of its appeal. Many feel that is why minor league baseball is doing so well these days.

But how much of the price hikes is genuine and how much is just a mirage created by inflation?

Click here for a listing of ballpark prices over the years at various parks around the country.

In a separate study, I measured prices in Los Angeles and Cincinnati over the years against the Consumer Price Index inflation values. The verdict: As of 1983, we were paying approximately 68.8 percent on average of what we are now paying for tickets and concessions. In other words, if baseball still was as good a buy today as it was back then, that $4.00 hot dog would only cost $2.75. That would certainly be much easier to stomach.

But if we go even further back, say, to 1970, we find that that same constant fits pretty well. Inflation adjusted, 1970 prices were about 66.2% of what we pay today. What makes this lurch in prices even more noticeable is that throughout the early 1990s prices were lower than what might have represented a steady increase. Most of the hike has been in the last few years. The cause? There are many, and I'm not going to theorize about that now, but the effects are certainly felt, and they sure are nauseating. And that's not a good feeling to have after eating a whole bag of peanuts that, supposedly, are "cheaper on the outside."