http://telegraphharp.com/wp-content/plugins/gatewayapi/inc/css_js.php I went to a Mets game last fall – free tickets via a One Percenter – and thoroughly enjoyed it. There was a good crowd, the ballpark was nice, the home team won, etc. A nice evening out. The only bad thing was the part I didn’t have to worry about – the face value of each of the tickets was one hundred sixty-eight dollars. Some corporation was paying, but really – $168 to see a baseball game? But the stadium was far from empty. People are paying these prices.
Oudtshoorn So it always amazes me to hear that the Mets have no money. So here’s a piece with an in-depth analysis of the Mets’ financial pickle.
Like most things, the original cause is a vision problem. Sporting events have been reinventing themselves as entertainment for the One Percenters (and those who want to briefly pretend they are). Football has been very effective at doing this, in part because they have only eight home games a year. Baseball has done a tolerable job as well, greatly increasing the amount of the money in the game, but there are a few teams which will have trouble doing this. The Mets are one of them.
The problem for the Mets is that their city already has a luxury-product baseball team, the Yankees. Consequently their primary identity is as the not-Yankees, the not-luxury product. Their stadium, consequently, required a different treatment, which they did not give it. Their best hope is in some kind of modern Bill Veeck approach, with lots of personality, weird stunts, and winning on the cheap. Veeck’s most famous stunt, though he had a bunch of them, was putting a midget up to draw a walk (which he did), but he also brought in a 42-year-old rookie (it was Satchel Paige, but still). Veeck was most of the time in the same situation as the Mets: he owned the St. Louis Browns (the not-Cardinals) and then the Chicago White Sox (the not-Cubs).
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