How My Husband and I Spent $11,000 on Our Love of Baseball

Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack. And a T-shirt. And an MLB.tv subscription. And World Series tickets.

Sport fan was not one of my self-descriptions. Redhead, swimmer, klutz — but fan? I had a summer of intense devotion to Billy Ripken, younger brother of the Baltimore Orioles’ more beloved Cal (chalk that up to my own little sister syndrome).

While in college, the basketball team had a one-game run in the NCAA tournament that I followed with gusto for two 20-minute halves. Otherwise, I didn’t even care enough about the Super Bowl to watch it for the commercials, as evidenced by that time I had a temp job at the NFL, blindly directing callers to contact the employee I was filling in for on her mobile “because she’s in San Diego” … where the Super Bowl was taking place … four days later.

My husband’s been of the other sort since his favorite team, the Kansas City Royals, won the World Series when he was 12. But there wasn’t much glory after 1985. By the mid-aughts, the first thing I heard him say most mornings, shortly after turning on “Sports Center” and seeing yet another losing score, was “Fucking Royals.” (More recently, the last thing I heard him say most nights was “Fucking Royals” — smartphones make life better!) But in the fall of 2014, I climbed aboard his bandwagon as the Royals took the World Series to Game 7. And lost.

It got more expensive from there.

Spring Training

Depart New York in the cold gray dawn, arrive in Phoenix to dazzling sunlight, stock up on frozen tamales for a summer of no-cook meals — a trip to Arizona in March doesn’t take a lot of convincing. It was not a new flight path for us, having visited my husband’s father in Scottsdale for the past several years. Putting on a be-logo’d T-shirt in public and gleefully attending two games instead of hitting the pool (or a spa), then getting downright giddy while taking a selfie with centerfielder Lorenzo Cain in the background was completely new.

• Two plane tickets from New York to Phoenix = $1,286.40
• Car rental = $401.41
• Gas = $23.77
• Two tickets to Royals at Rockies = $61
• Parking = $5
• Ice cream = $7
• Sunscreen at the free dispensers in the outfield = $0
• Two tickets to Royals at Cubs = $60
• Parking = $5
• Hot dogs (Chicago style, in deference to the host team) = $20

Total = $1,869.83

MLB.tv

I expected marginal usage of this service at best: the occasional game on a Sunday afternoon; maybe listen to a broadcast while at the gym. Not even close. Our price-per-watch ratio was astounding. From White Sox at Royals on Monday, April 6 until the wee hours of November 2, we watched baseball nearly every night.

My husband followed the day games when he worked from home, sending me text updates while I was at the office. I checked for video highlights before making my morning coffee. I knew the players’ batting averages. I knew where on the plate they liked their pitches. I even followed them on Instagram and Twitter. Out of 162 regular season games, I saw well over 130. At least until the sixth or seventh inning — most those games were on Central time, and a girl in Brooklyn gets sleepy.

Total = $129.99

Royals at Yankees

Memorial Day at Yankee Stadium and by the end of the second inning, the Royals had given up 11 runs. At least the historically bad starting pitching performance eliminated all the drama right from the start.

Two tickets = $250

Bobbleheads

The menagerie of fandom is thick with tchotchkes, specifically Salvador Perez bobbleheads commemorating the team’s 2014 wild card game win. One part clumsy (see previous) + one part nervous eBay bidding = three bobbleheads.

• Bobblehead 1 via MLB online charity auction (broken) = $45
• Bobblehead 2 bought on eBay one month later = $74.75
• Bobblehead 3 bought on eBay three minutes later because I’d bid on multiple listings in case I lost out on Bobblehead 2 = $72.99

Total = $197.54

World Series

Come August, I’d started checking airfares for a holiday visit to Kansas City. December prices were already out of the good-deal zone, but for late October, refundable tickets (which could be changed should the winning not continue) were half the cost of what last-minute fares would be. That’s just smart shopping. Tell people you are going to a World Series game and they invariably exclaim, “How did you get tickets?” Answer: A lot of money.

• Two plane tickets from New York to Kansas City = $1,576.40
• Tickets to Mets at Royals, Section 141, Row P, Seats 11 and 12, Game 1 and Game 2 = $6,795.32
• Car rental = $323.86
• Gas = $17.68
• Barbecue at Arthur Bryant’s = $31.89
• Admission to the Negro Leagues Baseball Museum = $20
• Lucking into a museum tour given by the director Bob Kendrick = $0
• More barbecue at Joe’s Kansas City = $17.77
• Materials to make signs = $6.46
• Appearance of our sign on the stadium Jumbotron in Game 2 = $0
• New lucky T-shirt and winter hat = $44.98
• Parking for two nights = $40
• Food and beer = $75.97
• Two hot chocolates, plus commemorative cups = $20

Total = $8,970.33

Total for an inaugural year of Royals fandom: $11,412.59

Spread out over a year, it didn’t feel like almost buying a Hyundai. It did feel like there somehow wasn’t enough money to move out of the apartment where we are awoken each morning by delivery trucks to the grocery store’s loading dock underneath our bedroom window. And that holiday spending had to be curtailed. The budgetary red zone apparently also comes in Royal blue.

Coffers somewhat replenished by the offseason, I’m already in it for $109.99 for another year of MLB.tv. Because those years of thinking of April through October as simply spring, summer, and fall, I don’t care if I never get back.

Kathleen Baxter is a Brooklyn-based freelance editor deep in Mets territory.

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