Nice piece from yesterday (I saved it because I had a bunch of things already loaded for Saturday) – definitely worth reading about attendance in the new parks and how it seems everyone is sick of being ripped off. Did you ever think that there would be tons of new seats available at new ballparks – and both teams are in first place! I bet the Mets and Yankees didn’t think so either…
I once went an entire season without FSNY because I refused to give Cablevision the extra money (they had it on a pay tier). I got by on radio and get this – no baseball! I didn’t have cable in 1986 (Queens wasn’t wired) so it wasn’t hard to get through 1999. (I eventually got Directv).
That season I kept track of how many nights I missed having baseball – whether it was “good game against the Braves” or a friend calling me to say so and so had a no hitter in a late inning. You know how many times I cared? 5. Bob Murphy kept me plenty of company outside on the weekends, and a random Tuesday night against the Expos – I blew it off and did something else. I lived.
Now after that unexpected rant – here’s Wallace.
But where are the 53,070 people who came nightly to the old Yankee Stadium in 2008, and where are the 49,902 who showed up every night in the final season of Shea Stadium?
So far, the Yankees are averaging 44,636 in their new crib, the Mets 38,806. If baseball is so popular in this town and Yankees and Mets games truly are must-see events, as both clubs insisted throughout the offseason, why aren’t there 10,000 people milling around outside their ballparks every game night, trying to buy up every last ticket in the house, and the rest going home empty-handed and disappointed?
Its a good read, and also speculates about what the Evil Money Grubbing Giants and the Only Half-Evil Money Grubbing Jets are about to face at their not-sold out parks. If you think that football isn’t in for a surprise, read this – my kid who has been a season ticket waiting list member since way back in 2008 made it to the top of the list already!
Read the whole Wallace Matthews article in Newsday here.
www.metspolice.com
@metspolice
Do you think that Wilpon & son and the Steinbrenner brothers heard voices in their head saying "If you build it, they will come"?
None of this is a shock to me. It's almost like the recipe for a perfect storm – stadiums that were built to cater to the rich more than the hardcore (if you ever went on the Citi Field experience tour at Shea last year, you know) with ridiculously higher prices (put aside sight lines and such), people becoming more tired of ordering and processing ticket fees, and the fact that this isn't the roaring 20s (far from it, but I don't think the current economy is a complete factor aside from the missing corporate types). for the football stadium, the price structure is calculated a bit differently with PSLs, but it's the same idea.
I'd love to see a Subway Series just to see whether either stadium fills up at World Series prices.