The Mets, Their Fans, and Their Tickets

Most "real" Mets fans can remember back a to the dismal early 90s up until the horrendous 66-95 2003 season when you could buy single game tickets to opening day or the Subway Series, the same way you would buy any other ticket. While this lead to fans over paying for games nobody wanted to see, take the Pirates in late September for example, it also allowed Mets fans the opportunity to go to Opening Day or the Yankee Series for a reasonable price. Those were the good old days.

Then all of that changed...

First came the "packs". I forget what year they first used them, but the general idea was the Mets would set aside x number of tickets for season ticket holders, which was understandable, then they would also set aside x number of priority seats for people who purchased a seven pack, which would always have some witty name like "The All Star Pack" attached to it. Basically what this did was say to Mets fans, "If you want to go to Opening Day or the Subway Series, you can get guaranteed tickets, so long as you bought tickets to six other specific games", which would often include games nobody wanted to go to, like a Wednesday afternoon game against the Expos.

Then came the whole "different prices for different games" system, which made some games cheaper, but made the majority of games more expensive, and made Opening Day and the Subway Series "platinum games". What this meant was that if you wanted to go to a weekend game, or to see a better team, or wanted to go to a "platinum game" you would have to pay higher prices for the same seats.

Yet, while everyone hated being locked into this system, one which is a questionably a violation of the Sherman Antitrust Act, it wasn't that bad, because the die hard fans like myself and many others were still given the opportunity spend a few hours calling into the ticket office or logging onto the website to try and land tickets to these "platinum games".If you were a real die hard, you waited in line at Shea Stadium the day tickets went on sale. Of course, you weren't given access to all the available seats, just the ones they hadn't reserved for people who they might trick into buying these seven packs.

Then in 2006 that too was taken away from the fans. "The ticket lottery", as it came to be known, was a system that would allow all the fans to register their email addresses in a random drawing, for the privilege of being given the opportunity to buy tickets to these "platinum games". Sure they did this to try to increase "fairness" but in reality it did no such thing.

First, not only did every Mets fan in the tri-state area register for this lottery, but so did every Yankee fan, because remember this lottery was for Yankee tickets. As a result, half the people being picked in this lottery were Yankee Fans, who then tried to take over Shea during subway series weekend. In addition, The die hard Mets fans who used to have the advantage when getting tickets over the phone or on the internet, due to the fact that they were more likely to know when tickets went on sale, and would spend more time trying to get through, were no longer given the opportunity to gain that advantage.

The casual Mets fan, or bandwagon fan was given the same chance to get tickets as the life long die hard who actually remembers guys like Joe Orsulak or Luis Lopez or Mel Rojas, who played for the Mets during the dismal years. Why should this be the case? Everyone should be given the equal opportunity to call in or log on and get tickets at the same time, not just the select few who were lucky enough to get picked by some dumb "lottery".

Then, just to add insult to injury, with Mets tickets becoming harder to get every year, the Mets announce that the new Citifield will have 10,000 less seats than Shea... How the hell does this even make sense? The Mets claim this was done so that the fans can be closer to the action. Once again this makes no sense. If the Mets sold no tickets in Shea's upper deck, that doesn't make the fans on the field, loge and mezzanine levels closer. It just prevents people from buying tickets. The whole reason why the Mets did this was so that they could claim they were selling out more games, and would then have the justification to jack up ticket prices. Thus allowing them to make more money while selling less tickets.

You know, considering the Mets refer to their fans as "The Greatest Fans in the World" you would think they would treat the fans with a little decency. Of course, if the Mets are terrible in a few years, the organization wont be turning to these bandwagon fans to try to sell tickets, they'll come back to the die hards who have been screwed every step of the way, to try to sell more tickets. And of course, because we love our Mets no matter how bad they are, we'll all, like a bunch of schmucks, be waiting in line to get these tickets.