HIgh cost of baseball - Pricing the kids out

Columnist Bob Herbert in the New York Times today, "Pricing the kids out", bemoans the high cost of attending sports games in the fancy new stadiums

My reply as a comment was this
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Yep. I spent the last 20 years living within 2 miles of the University of Michigan stadium, and have never been there to see a game, and refuse to pay these kinds of prices, let alone be subject to harassment or arrest for bringing water, even, to a game.

In line with the rest of your articles on the collapse of American education, this one should go on the list. We could be teaching social skills and values, such as fluency in the ability to ask for help, fluency in the ability to make new friends, fluency in the ability to repair and improve relationships, and, of course, fluency in the ability to organize social activities that don't cost money, maybe even activities everyone participates in instead of passively watching, or instead of hooting and yelling and jumping while watching.

The poet T.S. Eliot asked \"Where is the Life we've lost in living?\"

Ten years studying algebra and zero weeks studying friendship?

We need new values, new virtues or refreshed virtues, and new heroes and heroines -- and they should not be people paid millions of dollars, period.

They don't need to lower the costs at the stadium, we just need to all stop going, and create our own new icons who have the virtues and values that we wish we had, and wish our children had.

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Oh, and, yes, I am fully aware that the plural in Latin of "stadium" is "stadia", but good grief.