The Audacity of Hope

Last year I wanted to make sure that I saw the new CitiField and also the Mets were a team that was going to contend for the NL East championship and play meaningful games throughout the season. So I figured that it wouldn't be a huge deal to buy a 15 game package to see the Mets. Having said that (do you...respect wood?) last year at CitiField was an unmitigated disaster. The first few games were interesting checking out the stadium and watching the full team on the field. Circa June it just became a chore to head out to the stadium and find someone to go with me.

There are a few exceptions. The Kath and I took our son to his first game and he had a good time and talked about it for months afterwards. There was also a rain delayed game I went to with Side Bar that was one of the more fun and interesting baseball game experiences. There was something about the atmosphere in the 25% full stadium that just struck me that night.

Anyhow, I decided long ago that there was no way I would be renewing my seat package. Back in Shea Stadium they used to have 6 packs of games, which was just about the perfect amount of games. Now, there was one year when I went with my buddy, the Commodore, to 25 games. We went to every Tuesday and Friday game and, I must say, it was a lot of fun. But the Commodore has moved out to an entirely new continent and the Mets were actually good that year (until September). I was expecting an overture from the Mets to renew my seats, but what I got was quite unexpected. They sent me a letter, the upcoming season's schedule, and an invoice for upwards of $750. I was assured in the letter that my invoice was for less than I paid last year, which frankly just served to remind me how much I blew on those tickets last year with not much to show for it. Add to that the fact that the ticket package they were trying to sell me was for 15 games where there was one Philly game, one Yankee game, 11 incredibly mediocre games, and where the first and last games were both against the Nationals.

So let me understand, Mets. You guys suck. There's no real conceivable way you are going to be any better this year barring the unlikely incapacitation of both Omar Minaya and Jerry Manuel that miraculously ends in October of next year. You lowered your prices by roughly 1%, since I paid basically the same for those tickets last year. And then you have the audacity to send me an invoice rather than a letter begging me to renew my seats. And on top of all that the ticket package you're trying to sell me literally sucks balls (yes, literally).

Look, I like the Mets. I will root for them to improve and watch all their games on TV and probably go to a few this season. But I am not, as the gies who call up WFAN are so proud to exclaim, a die hard Mets fan. I am a die easy Mets fan. And I will not be buying a ticket package from you gies this year.

(Somewhat relatedly, I have discovered that I am, in fact, a die hard Knicks fan. It's basically inexplicable, but I still watch all of their games. I kindof expect them to compete even in games where they are clearly overmatched. It's not really something I set out to be, it's just something I am.)

Dear Football Fans, Fuck You

Let's say you own 4 season tickets on the 50 yard line for the Jets. To get the season tickets you have to buy tickets to 10 games, 2 of which are preseason games. In 2008, each of those seats costs $90, so for your season tickets you will pay $900 times 4 seats, which is $3600.

In 2010, when the new stadium opens, you will have to pay a Personal Seat License (PSL) fee of $25,000 per seat for the right to purchase your seat. Then the individual game tickets, instead of $90 each, will cost $700 each. So $700 times 10 games times 4 seats is $28,000. In 2010, therefore, your 4 season tickets will cost you $128,000. In 2011, and every year thereafter, they will cost you a mere $28,000.

Tickets for Giants games will be more expensive, but I don't know the exact numbers and my looking it up is really not necessary for my point to be made.

Who, pray tell, is going to pay over $100,000 for the right to watch the Jets? What I would do with that $128,000 is use it to open a sports bar and invite all the former season ticket holders to come and watch that game, along with every other game in the NFL on Sundays.

I know that a lot of research went into these pricing plans, but I'm seriously wondering who is going to buy these tickets. Even ticket scalpers wouldn't make a profit on those things.

Mets to Fans: "Fuck You, Fans!"

Shame on you, Mets fans.

What were you thinking? Have you forgotten last September? I hope a little 10-game winning streak didn’t scramble your brain so badly that you actually entertained the thought that—despite a 3-run lead in the 9th—the Metsies might overtake the Phils for first place.

Oh, you were thinking that?

Again, shame on you.

The Mets did their best to make it quite clear to anyone paying attention that they had absolutely zero intention of winning last night. You certainly should have noticed during the 8th. It started with Endy Chavez inexplicably stopping at second base, seeming to say, “A triple? Nah, man, I’m good here. A 3-run lead is plenty, friend.”

The next batter, David Wright, proceeded to dunk a little liner into right field, just over the outstretched glove of Chase Utley. Right-fielder Jayson Werth is right on it, so what does third-base coach Luis Aguayo do in this scenario where holding Endy would create a 1st-and-3rd with nobody out for our cleanup hitter?

He fucking sends him.

Endy, of course, is out by a friggin’ mile. So clearly the both of them conspired to prevent the Mets from padding the lead. (Also, why not nail the catcher? I know Endy’s not the biggest guy out there, but if the ball is gonna beat you and the catcher is blocking the plate, why the hell would you slide directly into his foot? He came a lot closer to a broken ankle than touching the plate.)

This, incidentally, was the second time Aguayo waved Endy home directly into being tagged out. And to think, not getting thrown out at home was, until recently, something the Mets were actually good at.

Then, in the 9th, well, all hell broke loose, typified by Jose Reyes’s inane bases-loaded, nobody-out-yet non-out-get. (I’m still to flustered by his hesitation to come up with a better name for it than that.)

I’m tempted to say last night’s loss was “devastating” or “heartbreaking” or something of the like. “Season-killing” I suppose would be more accurate. That is, if I had harbored some fool’s hope that the Mets might come through this year. And if you, poor reader, were one of those who did, then yes,

SHAME ON YOU.

Canceling Flights

This just in, American Ailrlines sucks as a company. Now most of these flight cancellations, as best as I understand, are based on something dealing with bundling wires so that they don't chafe together. Also this is something that American checked themselves about two weeks ago and determined to be in good condition. As it turns out, apparently *every single plane* of a certain class of theirs was assembled incorrectly. That being said, these wires were used to support the backup systems of the airplane in case something goes wrong, which is rare. In a worst case secnario, the wires could chafe, give off sparks, and blow up the plane. This, again as best as I can tell, has never happened.

Isn't this pulling the whole fleet of planes off the circuit all at once a bit of an overreaction? Couldn't they just pull one or two planes off at a time and fix this? In order for this to be an issue and cause a crash (which hasn't happened since 2001 for an unrelated reason) several things would have to go wrong. There would have to be some kind of malfunction in the main system and the wires in the backup system would have to chafe to the point of malfunctioning. I get the feeling here that the probabilities here are infinitesimally small. I know if something happened and they knew about it that would be bad, but it just seems like an overreaction.

Squeezing the Baseball Market in New York

Both the New York Mets and Yankees are building new stadiums (stadia?) for the 2009 season. It seems to me like both teams are looking to screw the fans to a certain extent, and I know that this blog is generally a Mets sympathizer, but I have to take a shot at them in this post.

The New Yankee Stadium is going to have many more luxury boxes and new facilities and those people who are able to get over the fact that they won't actually be playing on the original site of Yankee Stadium recognize that the innards of the stadium, the clubhouses, dugouts, press box, TV booths, and so forth, are dilapidated and need to be replaced. They could obviously continue to play in this stadium, but in this era of new stadiums, the richest team in baseball should have state of the art facilities. And, to the Yankees credit, they are footing $800 million of the $1 billion price tag.

The current Yankee stadium holds 57,000 fans and the new stadium will hold 51,000, leaving 6,000 fans out in the cold. This is not a negligible number for the Yankees, because they sell out many games. They will have more luxury boxes, so capacity will probably be similar to what it is now, but the average fan is not sitting in luxury boxes. The Yankees, amazingly, have already sold 3.5 million tickets for this upcoming season before even one game has been played. Over 81 games, that's an average of 43,210 fans per game that have already been sold. Clearly there's a demand for tickets, and when the new stadium opens the demand will certainly increase rather than decrease. On some level I'll give the Yankees credit. The new trend in baseball is toward smaller stadiums and for the Yankees to put 50,000 seats in a brand new stadium, even though it's less than they currently have, is at least acceptable.

Citi Field, which will replace Shea Stadium in 2009, has similar issues, but to a larger extent. Citi Field will hold approximately 45,000 fans, down from 57,000 in the current Shea Stadium. A difference of 12,000 seats. 12,000 is the capacity of Madison Square Garden, and that's the number of fans who won't be seeing Mets games in person. The Mets also have serious demand for tickets. They have pre-sold 2.5 million tickets (25 of which have been purchased by me), again before any games have been played, which is 30,865 fans per game. I guess the reasoning here is that there is a more intimate feeling in the stadium with fewer seats, but I have a real problem with such a difference in capacity.

On most nights, the Mets don't need 57,000 seats, whereas the Yankees need all the space they can get to house their fairweather fans. On a random Wednesday at Shea there are probably 35-40 thousand people there, with a spike on the weekends and a full stadium for big games and holidays and such.

What's interesting about both new stadiums is that neither field is changing very much. The field at Yankee Stadium will be almost exactly the same, with the short right porch and double bleachers in the outfield. The upper level seats seem as if the will be recessed from the field a bit more than they are now, but otherwise it seems like it will be similar. Yankee Stadium is beautiful and is a fun place to watch a game, so I guess there's no need to change much.

Citi Field is not going to be perfectly symmetrical like Shea is, but the fences will still be similar. The main change is the asymmetry in right field and a deep gap in right center. Watching a game in Citi Field seems like it will be drastically different. Moving from an all purpose, cookie cutter 1960s stadium to a uniquely baseball stadium should make it a better experience from the fans' perspective.

Here's why I have a problem with the lack of seating. We know that neither team is going to start spending less money or lower their payroll, so what this means is that ticket prices are going to go drastically up, especially for the Mets. The Mets charge more money for the better games, and clearly get more fans as well. In terms of revenue, a good amount of their ticket revenue comes from their sell out games. If they have 12,000 people who are not going to be able to buy tickets for those big games, then they have to make up that revenue somewhere. The Yankees do not have this issue to such a large extent for several reasons. First is that they are losing fewer seats. Second is that their attendance is far more consistent, so they don't need to make up revenue just on big games. Third is that the increase in luxury box seating and the undoubtedly huge prices those will command essentially even out any lost revenue. Now that's not to say that the Yankees are not going to raise ticket prices, they undoubtedly will, but they've at least provided for most of their fans. Tickets for the big Mets games are going to get Stub Hubbed for hundreds of dollars.

Anyhow, I'm looking forward to both new stadiums, I just hope I can get in.