It's nine minutes away from the first pitch for a Hagerstown Suns game.
I have nothing to do and yet, I'm staying home.
Why?
Well, it just hasn't been that much fun this season.
It's been fun on the field, the team is winning, hustling, and playing well, despite having few highly touted prospects and they are all nice guys in my dealings with them.
This has been the least enjoyable season of attending games at the Muni for me in years and I think I know why.
Nope, has nothing to do with autographing either as for the most part, that has been pretty good even if we have to yell a bit louder with the blaring loudspeaker over our heads.
It's the atmosphere of doom and gloom around the facility.
It reminds me of the "Schleprock" character on The Flintstones, where every time you saw the guy, he had a black cloud directly over his head.
I'm not calling out specific employees or specific fans, this treadmill of indifference that has kept attendance down has now spread to the game itself.
It used to be that the team has its hard-core followers that created an environment of excitement, as small of a group as that was at times, that made the game fun to attend and it seems that finally, the uncertainty that follows the team due to its future location has finally begun to wear people down.
I know it has worn me down a bit.
Even I have grown weary of talking about Bruce Quinn, City Councils, Fredericksburg, or other destinations instead of the Hagerstown Suns and like the Chinese Water Torture, it simply wears you down and takes the fun away.
I still have had a blast going to Frederick and Harrisburg and I am really looking forward to later trips this summer that includes a southern trip, a game in New York and the Tri-City Valley Cats along with trips to the SAL and Atlantic League All-Star games, so this is not a "tired of baseball or tired of graphing" issue-it's an issue with my local team and that this entire "Should I stay or should I go" theme that surrounds the franchise.
I don't fault any one person, I think the Suns would love to have this resolved, and the area would as well, but it seems like, in anything dealing with politicians, things go at such a glacial pace that nothing gets accomplished.
The citizens of Hagerstown didn't help any by voting out councilpersons that had the framework of a deal finished and replacing them with publicity hogs that are more concerned with keeping their name in the paper than with deciding this issue, but what's done is done.
Putting that aside, everything trickles down and when similar things happen in larger cities, rarely does attendance leap up in an attempt to keep the team, usually, the result is a reluctance to emotionally (and financially) invest in a franchise that may not be around to return the love that you give out.
The Hagerstown Suns situation is very similar to many teams in larger markets, you get so tired of hearing about new stadiums or leaving town, that other than the most invested fan, you just throw up your hands and say to hell with them all.
The recent Sacramento Kings revival is the exception to this rule. Still, they had a dedicated mayor and council that busted their rear to save a team that they knew would never return if lost, so they had leaders that were prepared to do what it took to save the franchise, not this piecemeal, we just don't know what to do steps.
Add it all up and it is easy to see how the atmosphere is less than charged right now.
The game started and I'm here at home.
See you tomorrow.
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