Things ain't what they used to be and probably never was

Jim Carty of the Ann Arbor News has a few astute observations about the good ole days. Though the point of the piece is to debunk the notion of skiing becoming an elitist sport, he throws in a nice baseball observation too:

The example often used is baseball. A writer will say that he took his 4-year-old son to a Tiger game and spent close to $300, then remember how he used to go to Tiger games with his dad for $6 a ticket and hot dogs were 50 cents.

What the writer doesn't tell you is that to reach the neighborhood of $300, he had to buy the most expensive tickets in the stadium, park in the lot closest to the stadium, buy a kids jersey inside the stadium, eat in one of the stadium restaurants, and knock back a kids coke and two $8 beers.

You could, incidentally, get four tickets to a Tiger game, with four cokes and four hot dogs for $40 this year ... just like you can get a Colorado Pass for around $400, or less than the cost of five single-day lift tickets to Vail. If you adjust for inflation, I'd guarantee that four-for-$40 baseball deal is either as cheap, or cheaper, than you would have paid for a similar combination in 1960.