Game Participants

An excellent performance by the participants always contributes towards an impressive game. It should be noted that in this paper, the word ‘participants’

includes not only players but also coaches, umpires, team staff and other organised units. The 'excellent performance' that spectators are looking for is a keen competition between players; however, there is no way for players to play well and satisfy the needs of their spectators without the hard work of the other aforementioned participants, particularly in professional sport. A bad call by the umpire can affect the performance of the coach and players, bad preparation by the venue can damage play, and these and other things can affect the quality of a match.

This means that a competitive and attractive game depends on the performance of all the participants, not solely the players. During the focus

group meetings, many discussions were about the people (or participants) involved in making a game happen. Players, coaches, umpires and sideline staff are all subjects that spectators cared about, and spectators expect different things from the people in each role.

The Player – the players occupy the leading role in the match, and our focus group discussions came up with four 'expectation' that spectators felt towards them: players were expected to ‘do one’s best’, ‘display excellent skills’,

‘interact with their fans’ and to ‘achieve personal records’.

The Player – Doing his/her Best: Spectators expect players to do his or her best at every moment of a game. What spectators really want to see is players devoting all of their energy to their role in the match – they don't want players to just 'do their job' (“I just got to watch the players putting their all into it.

When they win I’m happy, but if they lose it’s OK because I know they tried their best.” interviewee No.4). While spectators realise that players can become exhausted due to on or off the field stress – just like everybody else – they feel that this is no excuse to shirk the responsibility of being a professional player. ‘Doing one’s best’ is more than just performance; it's also about showing and advocating good sportsmanship and the spirit of the sport.

The Player – Displaying Excellent Skills: Professionals are expected to ‘display excellent skills’ at all times when they are on the pitch – as in fact it is these skills which are the major draw for paying spectators, in the words of one interviewee No.18 reflecting on a past game: “the players kept missing the ball, and this affected the whole game – we thought it was a waste of time and money”. Players not only need to play to the best of their abilities at all times, as stated in the previous paragraph, but also need to constantly display a high level of technical skill in games.

The Player – Interacting with the Fans: Having the chance to interact with famous players is one of the attractions luring spectators into the stands.

While seeing a player play in person on its own is a draw for fans, being able to interact personally with the player is an experience much more desired by

spectators. Players also benefit from interacting directly with spectators: it primarily raises their public profile, as player-fan interaction allows spectators to express their support and admiration for the player (“We used to go to the Sinon Bulls’ practice ground to mess around, and the players were all really nice to us… We used to go to games just because of that, because at the time the environment was awful so we had to have a good reason to put up with it!” - interviewee No.8).

The Player – Achieving Personal Records: Establishing a record in his or her sport is every player’s dream, and personal records are a step towards this.

Spectators often feel honoured and elated to be able to witness and share in the moment a player beats their personal best, so it makes sense that spectators hope to witness a player achieve a personal record at some point during their spectating careers (the rarity of these events also increase their desirability for the spectator).

The Coach – The coach is the second most important participant in a ball game after the player and has the power to create tension among the spectators and directly influence the quality of a match. While fans don’t attend games for the prospect of watching the coach at work, spectators have strong expectation of a good coach: a good coach should ‘employ convincing deployment of players’ and ‘apply appropriate game strategies’. Focus group participants indicated that a coach possessing these abilities could both improve the overall quality of the game and meet fans' demands to (hopefully) win the game.

The Coach - Employing Convincing Deployment of Players: The convincing deployment of players seems to be the key skill the coach needs to display to earn the faith of spectators (“That coach had issues, he wouldn’t take Di Guo-Xun off and made him keep pitching, even though he’d already pitched so much he had no power left. In the end they really got a good hit on the final ball.” - interviewee No.15). A coach needs to be aware of and control players' individual conditions from the time they walk onto the field to the very end of the last innings. It is felt that a coach who can do this will find it easier to

adapt to and overcome the sudden changes and many disadvantages that unexpectedly appear during a ball game.

The Coach - Applying Appropriate Game Strategies: Spectators expect coaches to utilise appropriate game strategies at appropriate times during the game, and the extent to which a coach is aware of changes in players' and game conditions has a direct effect on his ability to apply appropriate game tactics. Adapting to the fast-paced changes that occur during a game and being able to respond with the right strategy helps to keep the advantage on the coach's team's side.

It is interesting to note that the majority of the attributes expected of major participants in a TPB game correspond with the elements needed to both win a game and to put on a good show. Game participants are not only the coach and players, and spectators have the following expectation towards minor participants.

The Umpire – more-experienced spectators indicated that the role of the umpire was vital to the overall mindset of the game (though the umpire's role is often ignored by spectators newer to the sport). The spectators indicated that their emotions were easily and directly influenced by the umpire’s decisions, and that they quickly lost interest in a game that seemed unfair or unjust. When decisions are widely perceived as biased, spectators lose their passion for the game and players may complain – disrupting play and further damaging the quality of a game. Players may even fight with each other, completely ruining the spirit of a game.

The Umpire – Displaying Fair Judgement: Although 'fair judgement' is a concept that can be seen as subjective, all decisions should be justifiable and seen as reasonable by the majority to avoid damage to spectators' and players' confidence in the umpire (“…the main umpire called it in, but then the third baseman call it out, and all of us spectators were just going confusing’” - interviewee No.2), subsequent damage to the outcome of the game, and damage to the reputation of the sport. Focus group participants indicated that

they often felt an umpire’s judgements were biased or unfair, and that fairness, as a basic cornerstone to any sport, is one of the most fundamental expectation sports spectators have.

The Umpire – Keeping the Game Flowing: Baseball is a fairly unique game in regards to the slow pace of play – this is something that cannot be changed without changing the fundamental rules of the game. Spectators of baseball are, therefore, experts at waiting – they wait for pitchers to pitch, for batters to finish their preparations, for the umpire to identify a good ball etc.; however, they dislike having to wait needlessly, and so identified a good ability to control the flow of the game and minimise waiting time as a necessary attribute for umpires (“I watch a lot of football now. Football has a stricter timeframe and the game has more of a flow to it, so it’s easy to watch for a lot of people. With baseball some games are quite smooth, but others are always starting and stopping…” - interviewee No.7).

Venue and Game Service Staff – After arriving at a venue to attend a game, spectators meet and interact with several types of service staff before the game even begins: ticket agents, ushers, vendors and other employees in similar service positions. While these people do not influence the outcome or quality of a game, they directly influence the spectators they interact with and their friendliness (or lack of it) could make or break a spectator's experience at the ball field. Spectators who have had arguments with service staff are less likely to enjoy the game, and this then impacts on the likeliness of them attending other games in the future (“We ended up having to do it ourselves, but we weren’t happy about it. We won’t go back to that stadium now because the staff were so rude we were shocked” - interviewee No.11). This is why the importance of service staff should not be overlooked by the business-oriented professional spectator sports providers. It certainly wasn't overlooked by our focus group participants, who identified ‘friendly and enthusiastic’ and

‘helpful’ as the two most important attributes service staff at a ball game can possess.

The last participant in any live sports game – whether amateur or professional – is the spectators, though this fact is often overlooked by the spectators themselves. However, the participants in the focus groups identified an expectation that they had of themselves and fellow spectators that was more concerned with their social lives than with the game itself:

they hoped to meet like-minded people and make friends while attending a game. Many of the focus group participants indicated that they had become friends with people they met while attending a game; most had at the very least struck up a casual 'game-buddy' relationship with a fellow spectator, some had even met their married partner at a ball game. Most participants expressed frustration trying to meet people with the shared interest in baseball, and admitted that while the chances of contacting a fellow spectator away after the game ends may be slim, the numerous interactions they have with people they meet and talk to at a baseball game enhances their enjoyment of the game (“Nobody arranges to meet because we all just end up there automatically. Then we’ll chat and catch up; sometimes we don’t even take the thunder sticks because we’re just there to chat, eat, gossip, stuff like that – just relax.” - interviewee No.14). The focus group participants therefore identified ‘meeting people with similar interests’ as one of the things they expected when attending a baseball game.

This means that spectators not only have expectation towards people who directly influence the game itself (players, coaches, umpires) but also those who influence the spectator's 'game experience' – staff at the venue and even fellow spectators. Each of these people is expected to have different attributes in correlation with the differing influences each wields over the game. Upon tracing the web formed between these different 'participants' in a game, it is reasonable to conclude that the different expectation spectators feel towards them links together to influence the overall experience and feelings of spectators at games.