I Just Broke Down
I just broke down. I bought a ticket to Opening Day on Stub Hub. I wasn’t planning to do this. I didn’t want to do this. I did it. It’s a really lousy seat. Upper Deck Reserved. Row Q. Makes me think of Avenue Q (you know, “it sucks to be me.”) Seventy five bucks. How did it happen?
Well, I was checking to see if there were any new comments on my blog. There was a new comment by Shelley on the post “Your Season Has Come.” Shelley, like hundreds of thousands of us, is an outraged fan who has gone to opening days in the past and lost the lottery and has been scrounging around trying to get a ticket ever since. She says she wasn’t going to spend $200 for a ticket on StubHub. She even sent me an e-mail asking if I knew of any way she could get a ticket. This is a loyal fan. I couldn’t help her. I didn’t even have a ticket myself.
So I was all prepared to write a post about how the real fan’s Opening Day would be the second game of the season on Wednesday, April 11. I already had tickets for that game, for myself and my daughter. Reasonably priced good seats, Loge Reserved, thirty bucks each. They were no problem to get. If the lottery was going to freeze out the Mets fans who had filled the stands for Opening Days in the past, then we could make our own Opening Day, couldn’t we? The poor person’s opening day. The Opening Day for those of us whose seats for the really big games were left out of the plans for CitiField.
I was at Opening Day in 1983 when Seaver came back, when they drove him in from the outfield to the “Welcome Back Kotter” song. Any fan that can show up for Opening Day in 1983 after the 1977, 1978, 1979, 1980, 1981, and 1982 Mets seasons, who can stay loyal to a franchise that gives Tom Seaver away TWICE, deserves Opening Day tickets. He or she deserves sainthood. But, he says, at the risk of sounding like a broken record, he or she doesn’t even get consideration when they design the little, new, lucrative stadium.
I should have stuck with my principles, and with my resentment. I should have been happy to go to the second game of the season and call it whatever I wanted to. But before I put up a post to try to rally other Mets fans to think the same way, I decided to check out StubHub to see what Opening Day tickets were actually selling for. I’d never been to StubHub before. The tickets were expensive. All of them over $100. But there was one forlorn little ticket for $75 way the hell up in the Upper Deck, probably being sold by someone who simply had an extra ticket. I bit my lip. I cursed the way they had us over a barrel. I felt the depths and the degradation of my total humiliation.
And I bought the frigging ticket. I’m going to Opening Day.
March 11th, 2007 at 3:54 pm
I understand this completely. My best friend and I have gone to Opening Day for years. We went the freezing 28 degree day in March for Glavine’s horrifying first start as a Met. We went when the team was in the lowest depths and management couldn’t give the house seats away.
Incredibly, my friend won the Lottery and we’re still keeping our tradition intact. At least for this year. But it kills us that diehard fans are being beaten up by the bandwagon. And that my Sunday ticket plan isn’t a guarantee for the new stadium, but more luxury boxes are (and how many games have I been to where at least two boxes are dark?). Worst of all, as you say, it’s as if management no longer cares about their everyday working-class fan. Memo to them - when the chips are down, we’re the only people you can count on.
March 11th, 2007 at 6:49 pm
The real pain is that its not going to get any better for us. Without getting into a long pedantic rant, lets just say that my own conversations with the ticket office have ranged between the horrible and the miserable, and the attitude is often “tough luck…we can do what we want.” Other friends of mine have confirmed that they are using the new ballpark as a club, with the veiled threat (or sometimes not so veiled) that if you don’t accede to their terms (i.e. the incredibly miserable “Family 7pack” offering this year) you are at your peril in terms of having the “privilege” to attend CitiField. (One person flat out said “the new park will be 20% smaller and it will be very hard to get weekend seats.” I nearly flipped out on her.)
I must say, at least as far as the customer service aspects are concerned, there seems to be a “sore winner” aspect this season. I don’t begrudge them the right to make a profit, but I am really getting pissed at the highhanded dismissiveness. Given that the Mets have barely any track record of being a CONSISTENTLY competitive team (say what you will about the Yankees, but its the exception rather than the rule that they duke it out for the cellar, let alone playoff spots), some perspective is in order.
Oh, and Fred Wilpon….please spare us any more of your romantic obsession with the Brooklyn Dodgers. Thanks to your “vision” we now all have a park even smaller than the one in Baltimore. At least the Yankees retro park reflects their own legacy and architecture….you had to appropriate someone else’s (and didn’t even have the creativity or courage to channel the Polo Grounds in the design….which actually DOES have some relevance for the Mets!) Point being, having your agents lord that “threat” over me is empty…..loyalty has its limits, esp. in an age of free agency.
March 11th, 2007 at 7:15 pm
I don’t blame you. It is hard. I go on there multiple times each day hoping to get lucky and find a good seat at a price I am willing to pay. I noticed today that there were 2 seats in mezzanine section 20 row C (or was it E) that were selling for $99 each. That didn’t seem to bad considering but I’m still sitting tight. I’ll pay $100 or more for a ticket but I want to sit in decent seats.
Maybe I’m being unreasonable under the circumstances. But I figure I still have 4 weeks before I have to panic. I want the people trying to sell their seats for $1,000 to panic when they still aren’t sold. Or maybe they will be sold who knows.
I still plan on figuring out a way of being there without compromising my principles. I might be a total idiot for this but if it were me I wouldn’t be out to make a buck. Last year, I sold a ticket to opening day at face value to a fan I didn’t even know. For some stupid reason, I think there are others like me out there. Hey, I said I was probably being an idiot. But I have until April 9 to find out for sure.
If not, I guess I’ll drive an hour and a half on opening day, hope to get a ticket and if not hang out at the bar with the other fans. At least I’ll know that they are real fans and not just a bunch of corporate suits just looking to get the day off.
March 17th, 2007 at 11:58 pm
They’re now selling “opening day packs.” so you can get an opening day ticket if you buy a certain 7 pack and pay even more. How sad. We’re going to be a the point soon where everything will be pre-sold and you can’t up a decide to go to a game.
April 7th, 2007 at 7:55 pm
I have 2 tix for opening day, my son can’t go last minute. Will not make the lacross team if he misses practice. Mezz box, row a, email me @ jayelco@aol.com if anyone’s interested.
May 2nd, 2008 at 9:58 am
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