In case you missed it, the Mets and Rockies will wear throwbacks on Tuesday to commemorate the Rockies’ first game (which is why the Mets will wear the home white even though the game is in Colorado.)
I was at that game…as a vendor. I wrote about it in my eBook Send The Beer Guy from which I excerpt below. The book is only $3.99 and I hope you will pick up a copy.
Oh scorecards how you tormented me.
The only time scorecards didn’t suck was on Opening Day 1993. The Mets were hosting a new purple expansion team called the Colorado Rockies. The scorecards said Inaugural Program on them. Collectors were ready.
No joke, they opened the aluminum gate, I walked about 3 feet and a man said, “I‟ll take them all.” 25 scorecards gone in point one second. Done.
I had been doing this long enough to know there was no way the Mets would let that be a limited run. Sure enough they printed more copies and the Inaugural Scorecard was available all season long. Whatever, I made my 16%.
Scorecards were given to the vendors by a guy with the nickname “Scorecard Vinny.” Scorecard Vinny was Jimmy‟s #2 and would run the store when Jimmy took a day off. Somewhere along the way I worked myself in to being permanently assigned “the sub-way gate.”
That meant that every day, all summer long, I would sell 40 scorecards out between Gate E and the round subway thingamajig where you most likely disembarked from the 7.
If you took the subway to a game from 1988-1994 you most likely walked by me. It was relatively easy work and definitely better than running around outside. I had the first crack at scorecard sales and I didn‟t have to move. All I had to do was stand there and yell, “Scorecard, Program!” in that vendor accent that is approximately “Sco-ah-cahd, pro-graham.” Then it was inside to the main item.
Since I didn‟t have nearly enough seniority for beer the go to item was ice cream, and within the ice cream kingdom the item was the aforementioned Steve‟s Bars. Ice cream in a box. $2.50 (aka easy math). Nice and light. Not messy. No spoons, no napkins. Geometrically conveniently shaped. $9.60 a case. Sell your 10 cases plus the cards and you made $100 easy.
Jimmy was of Irish ancestry and out of complete coincidence so were most of the Steve’s vendors. He had made a pact with us. We could sell Steve‟s all season but that meant we had to sell Steve‟s all season. All season included 30 degree nights in April and September. We‟d take our lumps on the tail ends and make it back in the summer.
Some of the guys with more seniority would complain but Jimmy would remind them that they passed on the deal. So while they were making $80 selling nice warm hot dogs on April 24th, we made $40. When July came we made $100-something and they made $80. The group became known as the Steve‟s Mafia or the Irish Mafia or some combination thereof.
Of the (usually) 13 spots I was 13th which meant that I had it good but not as good as some of my friends. I’d usually wind up in the Upper Deck, home of the ball-busters in- cluding Moe.
Homestands would get long and your legs would give out. Day games after night games are hard on players but they are really hard on vendors. Usually on a Saturday day game after a Friday night game I would “take it easy” and ask for “anything in the Loge” for the day. The loge was nice and flat with almost no stairs. A night of peanuts made for a nice break. Sure you lost a few conceptual bucks, but it was worth it on the knees.
What I didn’t like about the subway gate were the scumbag scalpers. (See how it keeps coming back to scorecards, they were traumatic.) Scumbag scalpers were the lowest life forms on the planet.
Scumbag scalpers would swarm people as they came off the big round subway station and would start trying to sell them tickets. What I really didn’t like was the pitch.
I remember one day some nice man was taking his son to a Mets game and was ap- proached by the scummiest scalper if them all, a Bill Belichick looking guy who would wear sunglasses. The scalper was very nice and friendly to the dad until the dad decided he didn’t like the offerings.
Mr. Scumbag went into a rant and told the kid (he was maybe 8) about how cheap his father was and how he could have sat behind the dugout but now he would have to sit upstairs because of his father! How dare you, you scumbag.
Thank heaven for the Internet where we can exchange tickets peacefully without having to deal with the worst people on the earth.
I’m no expert in city laws or policing strategy but I was always amazed that these people were not chased far far from Shea. I‟m also amazed you can set up a card table in front of the most expensive real estate in Manhattan and sell bootleg material, but that’s for another book.
As for vending, to keep seniority, and thus your picking order and the extra 3% sales that came with being a white-sheet, you had to work at least 65% of the events in any given season. That usually meant working 53 games.
I would try to barrel through most homestands and definitely tried to “get my games in early” because as you may have noticed, attendance often drops toward the end of the year.
That usually meant working all of a 6 game homestand, maybe 10 of 11 or 13 of a longer 14. If it seemed like it might rain I usually stayed home. The great thing about Harry M. Stevens was that you could just show up. Or not show up.
You showed up, waiting on the line for Jimmy to appear and you worked. If you didn‟t want to work then you didn’t show up. I only saw a few nights, and all of these were during the 1990’s, where prospective workers were turned away, and it never happened to me.
One thing I despised was a doubleheader. As much as I love Banner Day and rave about Banner Day now, to the vendor in me Banner Day Doubleheader was Satan. Not only did we have to work a full game and then most of another one, we had to walk around for like an hour in-between games while some Mets fans strolled around with signs. Boooo, I want to go home.
That’s really funny for me to type given my MetsPolice.com persona, but hey I’m being honest. Why work a 6 hour day when you can work three? It didn’t count as two games for seniority since it was one “event.” So no Banner Day for me. I rarely chose to work any doubleheaders at all.
Send The Beer Guy has 4.9 of 5 stars and Amazon and is only $3.99. If you have the technology to read this post then you can get the Kindle app for your phone or computer.
I have the inaugural game ticket for mets and Rockies. I purchased it in the hope one day it will be worth something!!