Baseball fans attend Major League Baseball games for many reasons-towatch their home team in the midst of a winning season; to bask in theafterglow of a recent World Series win; or to see a newly acquired All-Star.But many impersonal factors determine how many people attend a MajorLeague Baseball game, including local unemployment rates, the presenceof other professional sporting franchises, or the number of gamesbroadcast on television. What Took Me Out to the Ball Game utilizes a linear regression analysis toexamine competitive and team-market factors that permeated Major LeagueBaseball during the 1990s and what impact they had on attendance at games.It examines the significance of twenty market and team-quality factors, inparticular the impact of the 1994 labor strike which caused the cancellation ofhundreds of games and the World Series in 1994.
Katharine E. Willers is a lifelong baseball fan and economic enthusiast. Resulting from research she did for this book, she spent a summer as a researcher at the National Baseball Hall of Fame Library in Cooperstown, New York.
Ms. Willers graduated magna cum laude from Cornell University with a BA in Economics and earned an MA in International Relations from The Johns Hopkins University School of Advanced International Studies. After initially pursuing a career in business and marketing, she transitioned to a career in policy and international affairs.
Katharine is married and currently resides in the Washington, DC area.