Category: mets

Like so many others, I will not be renewing either of my 15 game plans next year. Last week I sent my invoice back to the Mets along with the following letter addressed to Fred Wilpon. I also cc’d several other front office personnel as well as several members of the media. Do I expect a response? Not really, but enough voices and enough protesting – who knows.

Mr. Fred Wilpon

CEO

New York Metropolitan Baseball Club

Citi Field

Roosevelt Avenue

Flushing, NY 11368

Dear Mr. Wilpon

Thank you for sending me my 15 Game Plan renewal invoice. I apologize for not getting back to you sooner but with Thanksgiving falling right after I received the invoice I was a bit too distracted to focus on the Mets. I did want to respond this week though before the main holiday season pushes the team out of my immediate concerns again.

I am writing to tell you that I will not be renewing my plan for the 2010 season. There are a number of reasons I have decided on this action and I wanted to share them with you.

1. What happened to my 20% reduction? Yes I know the official statement was that tickets would be an “average” of 20% less. Well my plan is less than 6% less than last year. I am really curious how you calculated this average of 20%. Assuming there are a lot of people like me with Promenade plans, that must mean that the people down below in the Main level got discounts of over 20%.

A reduction in my ticket cost of 20% really would have meant something. Only a little over 5% really doesn’t mean much.

2. Speaking of discounts and ticket prices, how come the Mets don’t offer any bulk discount for buying into a plan? I checked it out – the cost for the 15 games in my plan is the same whether I buy the tickets individually or in the plan. So where is my incentive? The possibility of playoff tickets? Really?

Just about every other sports franchise in the country offers plan holders a discount for bulk purchasing over the cost of individual games.

3. I noticed you changed the name of some of the plans. The Sunday plan is now the Sunday-Plus Plan. I guess that’s to make it sound that much more special – there’s something extra in there? Seriously, that “Plus” isn’t fooling anyone. I understand that weekday games are harder to sell, but that doesn’t mean you should force them on us. There is a reason I want a “Sunday” plan – it’s because I cannot make it to many games, especially not weekday games. So all of a sudden my 15 game plan is now only 10 games, but I’m paying for those extra 5 games. I really am curious as to why you think I should do this.

4. OK, this is my last point on tickets. Stub-Hub. In case you hadn’t noticed, there is a fairly robust secondary market out there for tickets that is sanctioned by MLB. Yes, I know that a lot of this secondary market will dry up in 2010 because people (like me) won’t be buying as many plans. Regardless, there will still be a market for most games. So why should I worry about buying 15 games when I won’t go to at least 5, when I can pick and choose games I want to see, getting some at below cost?

5. The next two reasons I have decided not to renew deal with the ballpark. Yes, you built a beautiful structure, especially when compared to what they did in the Bronx. But what about all those obstructed seats?

What obstructed seats you ask? I know that Dave Howard has claimed time and time again that there are no truly obstructed seats in New Shea. I would like to ask you and Mr. Howard to come up and sit with me sometime, say in Section 527, Row 1. Try to describe what is happening in the game to me from those seats. Please. Then try to explain to me that there are no obstructed seats.

Again, I understand that no ballpark is perfect, and I am not complaining about sight-line issues (such as not seeing LF from many LF seats – Old Shea had those issues). But when I am paying that much money to see a game – well, honestly I expect to actually see it.

6. This last reason I will say that you have begun to address – making New Shea a Mets ballpark. Is New Shea a nice place to visit? Yes. But as I commented to a friend of mine last season, it felt like we were on the road there was so little Mets related signage and history in the park. I applaud you for taking some steps to address this issue, though from what I have read so far it’s not as far as you could or should go. Acknowledging Mets history is not the same as honoring it – and that is something that still needs to happen. Bring back Old-Timers Day and Banner Day. Put up a Seaver statue in front of the rotunda. Retire 17, 16, 18, and 31.

I was also going to cite as a reason a mediocre team, but then I thought back to so many years of bad Mets teams when I still enjoyed coming to the game. What I realized, and I think this is a lesson that no matter how long you own the Mets I don’t know if you ever will understand, while the quality on the field is important, the atmosphere off the field and the relationship that management and the team has with the fans is far more important. Right now the Mets could have a great team – but there is no connection with your base.

Bottom line Mr. Wilpon, if you want to win me back, show me you care.

I realize that the chances of you actually reading this letter are slim, so I have decided to send copies to the people within your organization that have a direct effect on these issues. And because I feel so strongly about this, I have also sent copies to several members of the media, and will be posting the letter on www.metspolice.com

I don’t expect a response, but it would go a long way if there was one.

Regards,

Daniel Twohig

cc: Jeff Wilpon, Omar Minaya, Dave Howard, David Newman, Craig Marino, Bill Iannicello, Phil Mushnick, Craig Carton, Evan Roberts, Shannon Shark

Main Mets Police page

Follow us on twitter @metspolice

Facebook page

send ideas/guest columns to shannon at metspolice.com

Interesting..

Daniel Murphy had the most homers of anybody in a Mets uniform with 12 last season. That actually has prompted team brass to revisit the issue of Citi Field’s dimensions – or at least the wall heights. Mets officials are considering removing the second level of padding in center field to make the wall eight feet in the area Carlos Beltran patrols. They had maintained late in the season that the stadium would remain identical in 2010.

Read more: Daily News

Main Mets Police page
Follow us on twitter @metspolice
Facebook page
send ideas/guest columns to shannon at metspolice.com

So a few things…

Thanks to everyone who let me know that the print copy of Sunday’s News included the phrase “low budget latin players” (read here for more on that) but it hit me at 3am what the real story is.

The inclusion of the word “latin” in the sentence is interesting, and we can do that whole brouhaha another time, but let’s focus on the rest of the sentence.  Low budget players.

That suggests that the Mets believe the injuries were the problem and that the basic team is solid enough to win.   Now before you roll your eyes, we all believed the same thing a year ago.  However, I think we’re all justifiably less enthusiastic about folks like Pelfrey, Murphy and Maine than we were last off-season.  I also take the Phillies very seriously.

Should be an interesting week, and yeah I guess we’ll pay attention to the surnames of any new players just in case that where’s there’s smoke there’s fire.

Over the weekend, if you missed it, I wondered how the season ticket renewal rate might affect the signings this week.  I’ve heard from a few that they are being told that the deadline was “soft” and that the Mets would welcome a late renewal.

Main Mets Police page
Follow us on twitter @metspolice
Facebook page
send ideas/guest columns to shannon at metspolice.com

Very interesting.   This morning, the online version of the Daily News contained the line below.  I could not believe it, blogged about it, and even emailed a few friends.   Here is the line as it was online this morning.

Mets? Did somebody say the Mets? They won’t spend the money for Holliday, Bay or Lackey and apparently, they’re only interested in signing low-budget Latin players, having shown little or no interest in Byrd, Figgins, DeRosa, Wolf or even Staten Island‘s Jason Marquis, while waiting for their markets to come to them. At the same time, the Phillies and Braves wasted no time in addressing their needs. Sad.


Presently (8:02pm) it says:

Mets? Did somebody say the Mets? They won’t spend the money for Holliday, Bay or Lackey and apparently, they’re only interested in signing low-budget players, having shown little or no interest in Byrd, Figgins, DeRosa, Wolf or even Staten Island‘s Jason Marquis, while waiting for their markets to come to them. At the same time, the Philliesand Braves wasted no time in addressing their needs. Sad.

Look, I’m not insane, I’m not going to destroy my site’s credibility by throwing the word Latin in there to cause a ruckus.  It was there.  I have no idea how it got there, and maybe it was unfairly attributed to Madden by whoever posted it online.  I have no idea, but it was there.  The only editing I made to the text was to put spaces back in around the blue text (when you copy the Daily News site’s text to a Blogger template it tends to crunch the text, look after the word Phillies for an example of the scrunching), and I changed the text attributed to the URL, otherwise it looks like this:


Read more:http://www.nydailynews.com/sports/baseball/2009/12/05/2009-12-05_gentlemen_start_your_wallets_gms_rev_their_engines_with_baseball_winter_meetings.html?page=1#ixzz0YxeNqs7c

As I said this morning, it was stunning to me to think a respected columnist would print that view.   If anyone has the newspaper version of the article I’d be curious to know what that version says.  I’d be curious to know how the word got in the original version, and how it came to be revised.

Main Mets Police page
Follow us on twitter @metspolice
Facebook page
send ideas/guest columns to shannon at metspolice.com

#52 in our Five Questions For An Average Mets Fan is Lenny who is quick and to the point.

Main Mets Police page
Follow us on twitter @metspolice
Facebook page
send ideas/guest columns to shannon at metspolice.com