Category: Sports

$4,785. That’s How Much It Costs to Be a Sports Fan Now.

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Illustration by Andrew Rae | The New York Times

It’s no secret that affordability is a big concern in the United States. The prices of eggs, coffee, and even candy bars have been going up, up, up—and the same is true of seats and even hot dogs at a baseball game. According to Joon Lee, the price of being a sports fan now is—brace yourself—$4,785. Lee is a sports journalist whose work has appeared on ESPN, Bleacher Report, and YouTube, as well as in the Boston Globe and the New York Times, where this piece was first published in 2025. He says his goal is “to make sports media feel alive again.” Read on to see what he has to say about the price of being a sports fan; fair warning: it’s no longer as simple as “Buy me some peanuts and Cracker Jack.”

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Why So Many Baseball Players Are Dominican

Nine Dominican youth league players, in uniform, sitting in their dugout.
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If you pay any attention to major league baseball (or even if you don’t), you’ve probably noticed that a disproportionately large number of star players are from the Dominican Republic, the Caribbean nation that shares its island with Haiti. Is that a coincidence? Are Dominicans just naturally and inexplicably gifted at the game of baseball? Well, no and (probably) no. The explanation involves much more than just sports; to get the full story, a Vox investigative team dug into two centuries of history and economics that involve, among other things, the Atlantic slave trade, the Cuban revolution, the business of baseball, and sugar. This video report was published in July 2023.

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LSU’s Angel Reese, Iowa’s Caitlin Clark, and the Double Standards of Race in Sports

LSU forward Angel Reese making the “you can’t see me” gesture in front of Iowa guard Caitlin Clark during an NCAA championship game in 2023.
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Image credit: MADDIE MEYER/GETTY IMAGES

A basketball player waves their own hand in front of their own face and gets called out for behavior that some reports and social media posts called “thuggish.” Wait. What? Did that really happen? Well, yes, it did. Here’s the context: an NCAA tournament championship game, two top teams, each with a top-notch star player. So far, nothing remarkable, right? Ah, but did we mention that it was a women’s game? And that the hand-waving player was a Black woman leading a mostly Black team from a school in the South, while the other star player was a White woman leading a mostly White team from the Midwest? Is it making sense yet? Award-winning sports journalist William Rhoden details the situation and adds his own argument in this April 2023 Andscape essay.

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Goin’ Bananas: How a Minor League Team Got More Followers Than the Yankees

About twenty uniformed Savannah Bananas players line up side-by-side on the field doing a kick-line dance.
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Image credit: Christian Science Moniter

To hear some people tell it, the Savannah Bananas, a professional baseball team based in Savannah Georgia, are making baseball fun again (Gasp!!). They play by modified rules (“Banana Ball”), their games consistently sell out, and according to this July 2022 report by Patrik Jonsson, Christian Science Monitor staff writer, they have more social media followers than the New York Yankees. What’s up with that?

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The Realities of WNBA Stars Who Play Abroad

A basketball player dressed in the lime green professional Czech team uniform dribbles a ball around a defender in a dark green jersey.
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Why would they go so far from home to play the game? Well, many reasons. Opportunity. Adventure. Compensation commensurate with skill. And don’t forget love of the game. It’s not hard to understand. Still, it’s not for everyone, and there are plenty of challenges and drawbacks. What are we talking about? WNBA stars who play for teams in other countries during the off-season. In this extensive May 2022 report, Andscape (formerly the Undefeated) and Getty Images collaborate to profile four WNBA players who don pro-league uniforms in Turkey, Spain, and the Czech Republic.

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“Qué lo qué, papi”: Giants Bridge Cultural Gaps with Spanish Classes

San Francisco Giants outfielder Luis González leaps up right at the wall to make a spectular catch of Chicago Cub Christopher Morel’s fly ball.
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Nearly a third of Major League baseball players in 2022 come from countries outside the United States, and the great majority of them are from Latin America. (The Dominican Republic alone accounts for slightly more than 10% of all MLB players. We don’t know how many of the Latin American players are already Spanish/English bilingual when they arrive (many certainly are), nor do we know how many Latino US-born players are also Spanish/English bilingual. What we do know is that language and communication can’t be taken for granted on any team. Maria Guardado, MLB.com’s staff writer who covers the San Francisco Giants, wrote this April 2022 report on an unusual effort being taken by the team to help bridge a language gap.

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What It Means to Be From Two Places at Once

A surfer wearing a red "Vans" shirt rides a wave.
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If you were selected to compete in the Olympics, what country would you represent? For many athletes, the question would never even come up, but that’s not true for everyone. Mahina Maeda, Hawaiian born and raised, participated in the first-ever Olympic surfing competition, representing Japan. In this July 2021 essay in the Players’ Tribune, she explains that she is “more than one flag, one country, one language.” (You can click the link at the top of her essay to read it in Japanese.)

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Breaking the Grass Ceiling: More Women Are Playing College Baseball Than Ever Before

A female baseball player wearing a grey and light blue uniform prepares to hit a ball.
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The US has a woman vice president, and there are now women referees on NBA courts and in the broadcast booths. Have women fully broken the glass ceiling? Not quite. In this June 2021 Sports Illustrated report, sports journalist Michael Rosen addresses the “grass ceiling” encountered by women baseball players, specifically, women on collegiate baseball teams.

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