"I have boys 11 and 12 years old, and as much as I'd love to take them to a game or two — that's the highlight of the summer — I can't do it," she said.

"My business has been severely impacted because of national economics. You go to the ballpark and get a hot dog and a Coke and the tickets and maybe a little souvenir and it's prohibitively expensive," she said. "Taking the kids to an old-fashioned ballgame is a major vacation."

MLB said two-thirds of its 30 teams cut their average ticket price or some level of seats this season. Even so, it's too much for some.

"With the economy the way it is in general, you're seeing people priced out of certain forms of entertainment. It's not just a baseball problem as much as it is an economical problem within our country," Los Angeles Angels outfielder Gary Matthews Jr. said.

"I think we still are the cheapest form of entertainment in sports," he said. "When you consider what NBA games run and the amount of games that they play, it's astronomical. Think about taking your family to an NBA game or an NFL game and see how much a day at the football stadium runs a family."

The AP-Knowledge Networks poll was conducted June 26 to July 5 and involved online interviews with 655 adults who said they were interested in Major League Baseball. It has a margin of sampling error of plus or minus 3.8 percentage points.

The poll was conducted over the Internet by Knowledge Networks, which initially contacted people using traditional telephone polling methods and followed with online interviews. People chosen for the study who had no Internet access were given it for free.

AP Polling Director Trevor Tompson, News Survey Specialist Dennis Junius and AP Sports Writer Jon Krawczynski contributed to this report.