>Subway Series Ripoff

>Good job out of Mushnick, as always, on policing the Mets on this one!

May 12, 2008 — THIS column has long maintained that if you’re unashamed of the business you conduct, you will gladly put your name, face, words and title to the sell.

Saturday night during Reds-MetsNew York Mets (shortly after yet another bogus Giuseppe Franco ad) SNY, the Mets’ co-owned network, ran a house ad. The spot was for Mets’ “Seven Packs,” a come-on that the narrator claimed, “includes a ticket to a sold-out Subway Series game at Shea.”

Once again, the Mets are selling tickets to games that they claim are sold out. That would be impossible, unless the Mets are perpetrating and perpetuating a fraud.

But what if those ads, instead of a faceless, nameless narrator, starred, say, Mets’ chief operating officer Jeff Wilpon? What if Wilpon put his name and face to them. Why not? If there’s nothing to be ashamed of . . .

“Hi, Met fans, Jeff Wilpon here. Our home games against the YankeesNew York Yankees , this season, are, unfortunately, sold out. As we all know, ‘sold out’ means all the tickets are gone, all sold out. Sorry.

“But I’m lying. We now tell such lies every year. There actually are plenty of tickets left to Yankees-Mets games. But if you want to buy one, you have to buy tickets to six other games. Sweet deal, huh?

“Would I want to be treated this way by my team? Well, no. Would I buy tickets to seven games just to get a ticket to one of them? Hey, I’m not a rich kid because my father’s a fool.

“But as you likely know by now, interleague games have been exploited by team owners to price gouge, to soak fans silly. And the Seven Pack is just one of the ways we, here at the Mets, do that. Hey, it used to be a Six Pack!

“But who’s gonna stop us, Bud Selig? Hope to see ya at Shea, suckers!”