Page BO, July 4, 1979 - North Shore News” os ; nr

“During the past week or so, good old Joe Fan
could have had himself a veritable sports feast
around the Vancouver area. Whether this over-
indulgence would have been good for him though

_ by Andy Fraser

wonder that many 18 and 19
. year olds are being paid
almost a quarter of a million
to ‘entertain’ us.

MAD TEA PARTY

For. example,: the overlap.

_ By early April,. the National.

Hockey League’ is ‘nearing
the end of their’ somewhat -
less than exciting 80 game
schedule.

The; National Haskeiban' .

Association is toddling along
Starting to think about the

beginnings of their Playolt

system. _

The. North American
Soccer League is getting
underway, and Baseball is
swinging into their 160 game

_ schedule for each team:

Near the end of ‘May. all
the above are still at it with

‘the addition of the Canadian
' Football | League training

pull those
behind them ‘and sometimes
little guys ride their: backs,
but they. will keep going to
Stir your ‘sporting’ blood.

We... are.

promoters must be giggling
behind their fan of dollars as
they watch the trance-like
culpability of Joe Fan a3 he
follows, blindly; from one to
the other with no breaks, but
plenty of overlapping.

‘Mind you, why blame the
promoters? It’s good old Joe-"

who obviously is content to.
watch, and- “watch, “and
watch. ; :

But just why does Joe and
the rest of us spend so much:

‘little wagons

-Supersaturated -
-with professional sport. The

At times, it. appears that
‘pro sport. :has* become: the’
means by” which: many live
out their’ fantasies of the
good buy 3 against the bad ©
Buy.

“Perhaps” ae “Gaagerdas -
pattern, especially if you-are
a Vancouver Canucks
supporter.)

‘However, here is an in- -
teresting question. ° If ballet
~and the arts received’ as
much time exposure and
media coverage, would they
attain the heights and~
popularity~ of professional
sport? } Most: likely. a

Another interesting
yardstick about the value of ©
_ pro sport: If: all. the hoopla

. . : . - camps. time, energy and money in andi increase in awareness of
is something which is best left -to Joe and his - the sports spectating pro sport is to have some
conscience (or possibly his wife). Professional sport -is: And the ponies? Ah yes, business? oO benefit for us, then there

Last Sunday evening the
Vancouver. Whitecaps held
forth. at Empire Stadium
against the California Surf,
an event which attracted
some 21,000 souls.

The following evening the
Milwaukee Brewers took on
.their offspring, the Van-

couver Canadians at Nat’

Bailey in front of anywhere

professional ranks and live.
On television there were
countless hours “of
professional golf, baseball,
soccer, boxing (another
somewhat questionable
sport), tennis, and of course,
professional wrestling. (On
that one, we will bite our
knuckles and refrain from
comment.)

. between 6,000 and -7,000 SHARP PROMOTERS
fans, depending on who you Thursday, June 28th through Saturday, July 7th
want to believe. Each of these sports
(generalization) has _ its
~~ Then on Tuesday evening, “supporters who pay out good-

B.C. Lions took the measure
of the Winnipeg Blue
Bombers in an _ exhibition
contest at Empire in front of
some 17,000 of the faithful.

AND MORE

_ But that wasn’t all for the
true blue diehard fan. The
Canadians - continued their
current home stand during
the early part of the week
and out at Exhibition Park,

the horses had their share of
‘the followers each evening.

Think for a moment, if
you will, of the volume of
dollars wrapped up in that
single week, or actually,
three or four days in sunny
Vancouver. If you took in

money to watch. And each
of these sports, and others,
has pretty astute promoters
who are fully aware of the
vast masses of spectators and
would be spectators who can
be enticed into watching

their particular event.

Thé sporting world has
grown into a multi million
dollar industry including
spin offs of those who tell
others about it, such as
columnists, commentators,
reporters, cameramen,
photographers, statisticians,

and on and on.

If all professional sport
were taken away today,
there would be a noticeable
gap in our ‘culture’ to say

turning into an ‘Alice in.

Wonderland’ creation. It is
becoming one long, mad tea
party, guided by some pretty
exotic mad hatters.

through wind, snow,
and hail, the betting win-
dows remain-open. Those

‘noble beasts will run summer
and winter. Sometimes they

sleet .

Is it a desire of the fan to
see the ‘pure’ struggle of
athletics or is it a form of
hero worship?

should be a great increase in
the number of people
becoming _actively involved ,
in the mary different sports.
Is there?

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borhood of $120 assuming,
of course, that you went to
the races for the ‘sport’ of it
and not to bet.

Incidentally, if the
gambling was taken out of
horse racing, would it still -be
a popular spectator sport?
Mind you, that’s working on
the somewhat nebulous
assumption that horse racing
is a sport in the first place.

However, we digress from

Those: ‘events’ “he men-

Professidnal sport has to
be classed as a ‘luxury item’
for most of wus. It is,
generally speaking, not
essential to our daily lives.
So when stadiums fill up for
games, and the Canucks
draw 14,000 to each of their
40 home games, it is difficult
to convince any of the
powers that be that the
country is in a recession.

With so many dollars

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