One can see the effect of this outlook in that first Pele game--a pinnacle for Boston professional soccer, but the beginning of the end. Taking advantage of Pele's appeal, the Minutemen oversold the stadium by several thousand people. As a result, often frenzied fans flooded to the edge of the playing field and mobbed Pele, injuring him slightly. After that, fans, players and the game of soccer would no longer head Sterge's list of priorities.
Low-Rent District
This past season, Sterge chose not to meet the high rental fee for Harvard Stadium, imagining that fans would not mind driving to Quincy--20 minutes south of Boston--to view soccer on a telephone booth of a field at 5 p. m. (since there were no lights for night games). He was mistaken.
Nevertheless, regular admission was hiked this season from $3 to $5. This backfired too as attendance plummeted. The price of a game was no longer comparable to that of a movie or a grandstand seat at Fenway Park.
Faced with financial problems, Sterge reached late June seemingly not knowing how his team was going to go from one town to the next. Unwilling to sink more money into the club, he used the theory of the three sailors stranded and hungry on a raft: sacrifice one so the rest will have plane fare back to Boston. So the sales commenced.
The real story in this scenario is the subsequent fan reaction--an almost total boycott that seemed almost the result of some joint action. The stadium deteriorated from a bowl of crackling rice crispies to a scattering of sceptical, soggy corn flakes.
The fans are fed up with paying first-class prices for secondrate action and minor league treatment while their favorite stars disappear. This trend is surfacing in other sports, and often the players are partly to blame. With reserve clauses falling everywhere and players selling their services to the highest bidders, they may be treading on their own long-range interests. Professional sports are not the escape from reality.
Even the Boston Bruins, whose tickets were jealously hoarded by corporations and streams of long lost counsins for several sellout years, had seats available last season as Bobby Orr headed for Chicago via the hospital, and Phil Esposito was traded to New York. As the 1976-77 season begins, the Bruins have 2,000 fewer season ticket holders than they did last year. A similar story is being repeated in big league towns throughout the country.
Let's hope that professional sports do not reach the point they did in Pawtucket when the Minutemen even forgot to bring a game ball.
The fate of the Boston Minuteman franchise may be announced today as the NASL general meetings wind up in Minneapolis. Sterge failed to put up the required bond by October 11, although he says he is still interested in Boston soccer. There are several potential buyers floating around the Twin Cities, if the NASL gives up on Sterge. The possibility also exists that the league will move the Minutemen elsewhere.