41 Amazin’ ideas for the Mets #4: road-game meet-ups

Here’s what we’re doing. We are crowdsourcing 41 ideas for the Mets. The ideas can be big or small. Today’s idea is from @stlmetsfan5

 

For those who don’t follow me regularly on Twitter @STLMetsFan5, I am a Mets fan living in the St. Louis area. I’m surrounded by Cardinal red, day and night. It’s a tough life, but someone’s got to do it.

Obviously, most Mets fans live within a couple of hours drive to Citi Field. If there is a game that they want to go to, they could buy a ticket and go at any time. However, we out-of-town fans do not have that luxury. I am lucky enough to live in a National League city where at least I get to see the Mets once per season. Those in American League cities only see the Mets once every few years. So when the Mets do play here, it is a BIG EVENT for me. I circle it on the calendar as soon as the schedule comes out, and I plan my life around it. I also attend all three games of the series because I know that’s my only chance to see the Mets all season and I want to soak it in as much as possible.

So, what does this have to do with your crowdsourcing idea? Some very loyal Mets fans do not live near New York. I think the Mets have an opportunity to take advantage of this and drum up additional interest for the team in cities all over the United States. My proposal is that before the first game in each road city during the season, the Mets sponsor and market an event at a local establishment where:

(1) …local Mets fans can get together over a beverage. I would love to meet other Mets fans in my area to share my misery/joy, go to Cardinals games with (it’s the only baseball we’ve got), chat with on Twitter, etc. Plus, having it at a local establishment helps the local economy and there’s got to be some PR goodwill in that.

(2) …have Mr. Met and perhaps the mascot of the home team show up and do some hijinks/fun.

(3) …have someone from the team come out to do a “chalk talk” about the home team and maybe do some Q&A.

(4) …perhaps partner with the home team to do some kind of ticket deal if you attend all three games of the series, and/or arrange hospitality at the home team stadium. When I go to games in St. Louis, I will usually get together with other Mets fans during BP and then go sit together with them somewhere in the stadium (strength in numbers). It would be cool if the Mets could help pre-arrange that and we can all sit together 7 Line Army style.

In other words, the Mets can truly make it an event to go on the road. Because we fans already consider it an event, I think there would be high participation. Also, some of these ideas are very low cost and could be implemented easily. I also think fans would be willing to chip in a couple of bucks if needed to offset costs, as it’s only once per year.

These are just some of my ideas on how the Mets can engage out-of-town fans. I’m not sure how feasible all of these are – this is more of a wish list – but maybe one or two of these ideas can stick. Excited to see everyone else’s ideas.

– Michael T. aka @STLMetsFan5

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Here’s what I need you to do: email me ([email protected]) your ideas. Make my life easy and actually write a few paragraphs about your idea and put your name/twitter handle to it so I can just cut and paste it. I’ll post one idea a day.

Here’s what I need you not to do: waste time with “Sell the Team” or ridiculous trades or general negativity.

The goal here is to crowdsource some cool ideas, publicly post them, and then the Mets can use them or not.

Send your ideas to [email protected] – put something like CROWDSOURCING in the title so I can pick them out easily (lest you get buried in a slew of You Own This Jersey emails.) and again write a little but about your idea. “They should have Kiner’s Korner” isn’t enough. What is Kiner’s Korner? How would it work? What is your vision for it?