Thank You, Sir, May I Have Another?

By Taryn "The Coop" Cooper
Posted Tuesday, December 18, 2007

Like many Mets fans, I was – as the form letter sent out by Jeff Wilpon stated after the last day of the season to other fans – “bitterly disappointed” by the way things turned out in the 2007 season.

And as a season ticket holder, I was torn – torn between renewing or downgrading my plan somewhat. I sold maybe 50 games of the 81 I get for the season. This is not to mention the several road trips I took too. Was it worth it? Worth the money I shell out and the constant needling of – will I be able to sell these tickets?

Of course it is worth it. You see, to most Mets fans, this is the last season in the grande dame, or as we know, the toilet bowl of Flushing, Shea Stadium. So it’s worth to buy out the season for guaranteed seats in the new CitiField, right?

How apt that I use the word toilet bowl, not because of the stinky bathrooms or the flooding lavatories on Roosevelt Ave…But because Mets fans once again get the crap end of the stick.

Not by the team – no, I believe that Omar Minaya is doing the best he can under the circumstances to get us psyched for 2008. John Maine and Oliver Perez are quickly becoming the young pitching faces on the team and David Wright wasn’t named in the Mitchell Report.

No…we’re getting pooped on by the team’s management, who were conveniently all so bitterly disappointed by the untimely end of the season.

Why, Coop, do you think the Mets management is taking a dump on the fan base? Can we say – 20% increase in ticket plans for the loyal fans that actually go to games. Who line the pockets of the businessmen who own the team. Who actually spend money on this game that is quickly being exposed to be tainted, once again, with a drug scandal.

So I see why the Mets executive office was bitterly disappointed at the end of the season. They couldn’t make even MORE money from the playoffs. FOR SHAME!!!!!!

So now, we’re left holding the cost of trying to put a winning product out on the field. But as one fan said on another board, the Mets do this for years. Ride the coattails of a successful year but do nothing to improve. In the meantime, jacking prices up so that their loyal fans, you know the guys that stick by them, can’t afford to go to a game anymore. Nice.

But there’s another reason. Not the we-didn’t-make-the-playoffs-so-we-need-to-recoup-somehow reason. It’s the…let’s-play-upon-the-emotion-of-the-Mets-fan-base-in-the-last-season-of-Shea. And on top of that, hey, why don’t we price out those people we don’t want (you know, the mini- and weekend-plan holders who are more die-hard than anything)?

Never before have scare tactics been employed in baseball than by the Mets, trying to threaten their fan base into buying season plans to “guarantee” their seats for CitiField.

So what’s my rant about? It’s this – the Mets management has got to be ashamed of themselves.

It would be one thing if prices were not raised last year on tickets. They were – including on my (boo hoo!) Diamond Club annual passes.

It would be another thing if the Mets actually made the playoffs this year. They didn’t. We all know how that one turned out.

And an entirely different story if they were signing players or making trades we didn’t think were detrimental to the team’s current and future makeup…

Do I need to bring up Lastings Milledge again?

I think to raise ticket prices the season after a monstrous collapse, during the last year of the stadium while the team is not looking much better than the less-than-.500 team since June right now.

But…so goes the lives of Mets fans. We will be there, as usual, and we will complain, as we spend our hard earned dollars on $8 beers and $5 boxes of stale popcorn, that the Mets had the audacity to raise ticket prices again, the year before the new stadium opens.

You know, we could make a statement by refusing to buy our tickets.

But we all know, some other person will be there with their checkbook, ready to take my spot.

Is it worth it?

Well the pain and agony sometimes is not. But of course we do it. We are Mets fans. We come back each year and say – thank you, sir, may I have another?