Double your fun by watching two games? Not these days

Let's not play two.

Apologies to Ernie Banks, the Hall of Famer who was legendary for the enthusiasm symbolized by the phrase "Let's play two!" But the fact is, doubleheaders long ago lost their pull. They are just a memory, even on Memorial Day, which used to be a festival. On this holiday in 1967, for instance, 14 of the 20 major-league clubs played doubleheaders.

Baseball had been following the oldest business axiom: Offer customers a two-for-one deal and you will get more customers. But it just does not work that way anymore. For years, it has been common knowledge that big-league franchises realize that they can make more money by opening their gates on two separate dates than they can by letting each person in to watch two games with one ticket.

It was assumed that fans simply had to live with it, as much as they longed for the days when they could spend a good, long afternoon at the ballpark. Now, though, there is a new twist. Commissioner Bud Selig said at a symposium in Manhattan last month that baseball business studies show that fans don't want to see doubleheaders.

He wasn't kidding or making it up, according to Dave Howard, the Mets' executive vice president of business operations. The Mets put no doubleheaders on their regular schedule; they hold them only when there has been a rainout and there is no other choice for a makeup date.

"You wouldn't sell more tickets if you had a doubleheader," Howard said, "and you quite likely would sell fewer."

Howard, a father of four, said, "For families with children, there are just so many things that compete for their time."

Can this possibly be true? What about the great times that grownup baseball fans look back on, packing sandwiches and making a day of it at the stadium?

"Well, we tend to romanticize those things," said Marc Ganis, a sports marketing expert who heads SportsCorp Ltd. in Chicago after having grown up in the New York area. He does recall that his first vivid memory of watching baseball was seeing Bobby Murcer have a big day in both ends of a doubleheader at the original Yankee Stadium. Still, he knows the economics that clubs face and the realities that families face.

"The games have become much longer," Ganis said. "Now you're talking about six, seven or eight hours at the ballpark, and that's pretty rough."

Bob Dorfman, a sports marketing specialist at Baker Street Advertising in San Francisco, said, "Gradually, it has just gone away as a custom, and I don't think anyone has really complained."

Mets outfielder Gary Matthews Jr. isn't complaining. "I never was the same the rest of the season," he said of having played three games in a little less than 24 hours in Texas heat when he was with the Rangers. "To get out and go to a game is great, but to get your 7-year-old and your 10-year-old to sit through 6 ½ hours of baseball, that's kind of a lot."

The doubleheader is either a gimmick that outlived its usefulness or a treasured piece of Americana that has been lost, depending on your perspective. Either way, it is a vanished species. It is rarer than a steal of home and has no more future than the flapless batting helmet.

Former players are divided about whether that is good or bad. Former Mets shortstop, coach and manager Bud Harrelson said: "I didn't like them. It was too long a day and most of the time, I had to play both games." As part owner of the Ducks, he knows that his team does not schedule doubleheaders.

On the other hand, longtime major-leaguer Jim "Mudcat" Grant, who was on Long Island for a charity golf outing last week, believes that doubleheaders helped people fall in love with baseball.

"They were wonderful," he said. "You could stay in the ballpark and talk to your friends. People brought food to the ballpark, they brought cakes."

Players liked Sunday doubleheaders because it meant they had Mondays off. "Being with the Cleveland Indians, I had a bunch of family friends in Detroit,'' Grant said. "I would spend Sunday and Monday nights with them and come back on Tuesday."

Fans now don't know what they're missing, in his opinion. "It's conditioning. If you condition fans that we no longer do this, then fans accept it," he said. "I don't think players like doubleheaders because of conditioning in the mind. If you're told you're going to get tired, you're going to get tired."

Before they vanished, doubleheaders did spin their own lore. One document at the Baseball Hall of Fame said the first one was played in 1882 after a rainout between Worcester and Providence. Baseball Magazine reported in 1946 that the first regularly scheduled doubleheader occurred between Philadelphia and Detroit in 1886.

Max Flack and Cliff Heathcote were traded for each other between games of a Cardinals-Cubs doubleheader on Memorial Day in 1922 (Flack lived near Cubs Park, before it was called Wrigley Field, and went home for lunch, not knowing he had been dealt). Jose Cardenal was sold from the Phillies to the Mets between games of a 1979 doubleheader between the teams. He was too shocked to play the second game, but the day did begin a long-term friendship with manager Joe Torre, who later included him on his Yankees coaching staff.

The Yankees drew 84,081 for a Memorial Day doubleheader against the Red Sox in 1938. Nate Colbert of the Padres had 22 total bases and 13 runs batted in during a 1972 doubleheader. The 1969 Mets won both games of a doubleheader by 1-0, with the pitcher driving in the run each time. The Cubs' Ed Reulbach pitched two shutouts on Sept. 26, 1908.

Joel Youngblood had his own personal doubleheader on Aug. 4, 1982. He went 1-for-2 for the Mets at Wrigley Field in the afternoon, got traded, flew to Philadelphia and contributed a pinch-hit single for the Expos that night, finishing a one-of-a-kind doubleheader. Both hits were off future Hall of Famers: the Cubs' Ferguson Jenkins and the Phillies' Steve Carlton.

The doubleheader did have its day, albeit a long day. "If you were in a slump, you'd get a chance to come out of it by getting four or five hits," said Frank Tepedino of St. James, who played on the Yankees with Mickey Mantle and the Braves with Hank Aaron. "As a part-time player, what better shot do I have at getting in a game than in a tail end of a doubleheader? Say there's a righthanded pitcher pitching the second game. Aaron sits down and I get a chance to play."

Willie Mays once considered having it in his contract that he didn't have to play the second games of doubleheaders, according to James Hirsch's new biography. So there was a weary side to doubleheaders, even for Banks, a guy who always said "Let's play two!"

Harrelson, whose Mets had a rivalry with Banks' Cubs, said, "He only played one, though."