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Baseball Saving Marriages

by madnessletters

This is an odd study that I hope to god was not funded by the tax payers.  I would like to start off this post by pointing out who ever wrote this article has zero understanding of sports.  How did I arrive at this conclusion? Take a look at the title of the article: “Cities with MLB baseball teams have a lower divorce rate!”  So what this is really saying is, Cities with Major League Baseball Baseball teams have a lower divorce rate!  I guess they didn’t understand that MLB stands for Major League Baseball.  To note this is not a common mistake made by people who frequent baseball games (which according to this article do so to save their marriage).  Who edits this crap?

The University of Denver Center for Marital and Family Studies has conducted a new study looking at divorce rates before and after cities got Major League Baseball teams. The study showed that cities with major league baseball teams had a 28 percent lower divorce rate than cities that wanted major league baseball teams.

My “evidence” shows that baseball has NOTHING to do with people staying together or not.  If anything I have evidence to the contrary.

ben-jolo-boston1

In 1990, a year before Denver was awarded a major league baseball franchise, the city’s divorce rate stood at six divorces per 1,000 people. Ten years later, and seven years after the Colorado Rockies played their first game, the divorce rate had declined 20 percent to 4.2 divorces per 1,000 people. In contrast, the overall U.S. divorce rate dropped 15 percent. University of Denver (DU) director of the Center for Marital and Family Studies, psychology professor Howard Markman also studied divorce rates in other cities that welcomed a major league team and found a 30 percent decline in divorces in Phoenix, a 30 percent drop in Miami and a 17 percent drop in Tampa Bay area. While there could be many explanations for this significant difference, Markman stresses the importance of fun and friendship in a healthy marriage. Going to baseball games is one way couples can have fun together and talk as friends.  

Seriously? Have you ever seen the attendance at a Tampa Bay Devil Rays game? It’s one of, if not thee, worst in the MLB.  To think that the few thousand couples, (which is a stretch), that show up at a handful of games a year are an accurate sampling of the relative happiness and divorce rate of millions living in the surrounding Tampa Bay area is pretty heavy on the crazy sauce.  This is statistical malpractice.

True it is nice to go with your significant to a baseball game it’s by no means saving marriages like these ass clowns are postulating. “Going to a baseball game and not talking about relationship issues, but rather having fun and talking as friends is one of the ways to protect and preserve love,” Markman says.  I think this study is missing the basic fact that just spending time is ONE of the ways to “protect and preserve love” (although I don’t see how it’s possible to protect love with Baseball but that’s just me).  Also I typically associate going to baseball games with drinking beer and eating hot dogs, not a terribly romantic endeavor unless you’re this guy.

fat-cubs-fan

One last point to make here:  Professional sports aren’t saving marriages, their not bringing couples together, they are forms of entertainment and when people try to make these sporting events romantic interludes, that involve thousands of strangers, the consequences can be disasterous and hilarious.

 

April 13, 2009   No Comments