Early Bird Baseball

As one of the top college baseball teams in the country, Stanford had the opportunity to host an NCAA regional this weekend.  Fresno State, Pepperdine and Michigan State joined the Cardinal in Palo Alto to determine which school would head to the College World Series.  After missing Stanford's rout of Fresno State on Friday night, I made sure to head to Klein Field on Saturday for the game against Pepperdine (which defeated MSU in its first game).  Though I did think that the evening game start time of 6 PM was a little odd (as opposed to 7 PM, a much more traditional start time), I didn't think much of it until I got to the stadium a few minutes before the first pitch.  Once I found a seat and looked around, however, the early game time made much more sense.

Never before had a seen so many elderly people at a sporting event in my life, and I've been to professional tennis tournaments and Princeton football games.  Everywhere I looked I saw groups of 65+ year old men filling the stands, clearly appreciating the 6 PM start and the opportunity to be home and in bed well before 10 PM.  While I had been to Stanford baseball games before, the crowds at the regular season games are relatively sparse and I hadn't noticed the drastic demographic split.  For the NCAA regional, however, it was clear that college baseball (at least in Palo Alto) skews heavily towards the elderly.

Why might this be?  I hypothesize that there are a lot of older people in the Bay Area who love baseball, but don't have the energy (or maybe the disposable income) to go to AT&T Park or O.co Coliseum and catch an MLB game.  For older people, those games involve all of the things the elderly hate: battling crowds, climbing stairs and spending money.  For less than $10, on the other hand, you can drive to Klein Field, park just feet from the stadium, and watch some high-quality college baseball.  They also don't sell beer at the Stanford games, so that means no rowdy youths around to ruin a good time.  Combine that with the 6 PM start - the Early Bird Special of first pitch times, if you will - and the perfect Palo Alto weather, and you've got a stadium full of retirees.

Beautiful view of Stanford's Hoover Tower beyond the Klein Field fence.

For comparison, I took a long look at the crowd today at the San Francisco Giants game at AT&T Park, where I saw the home team beat the Chicago Cubs 2-0 in a crisp, quick, well-played game.  Even though it was a day game on a gorgeous afternoon (see below), virtually everyone I saw was under sixty and most of the fans were probably in their 20s, 30s or 40s; the elderly demographic was nowhere to be found.  If you ever lose an elderly male relative in the greater Palo Alto area, I'd start by looking at Stanford's Klein Field.  Chances are they're out there sitting in the stands, waiting for the Cardinal baseball team to take the field.

The weather and the views at AT&T Park were absolutely perfect on Sunday.