Tickets Left for Mets' Hall of Fame Day
Ken Belson,
New York Times
July 27, 2010
Mets fans complained often last year that the team did not do enough to honor the franchise’s past at Citi Field, which opened in March 2009.
The Mets have addressed many of those concerns, adding pictures, banners and memorabilia throughout the stadium, and opening a tasteful Hall of Fame on the Rotunda level.
Yet for all their grumbling last year, Mets fans seem ambivalent about celebrating the team’s history this season. On Sunday the Mets will induct four heroes from the 1986 World Series squad into the team’s Hall of Fame.
That date might normally draw a sell-out crowd. Yet tickets are still available through the Mets, including ones in the upper deck selling for as little as $23.
The average price of tickets being resold online is about $57, less than the $64 average price for the team’s remaining home games, according to FanSnap.com, which tracks ticket resellers.
Perhaps the novelty to the 1986 team is wearing thin. The two players being inducted — Darryl Strawberry and Dwight Gooden — have made frequent appearances at the stadium in recent years. The former manager Davey Johnson and Frank Cashen, the Mets’ general manager in the 1980s, don’t engender the same loyalty as the players.
It doesn’t help that the Mets have tumbled in the standings, losing 9 of their first 11 games after the All-Star break. Arizona, the opponent on Sunday, is in last place and not one of the more popular teams in New York.
Ticket prices may be a factor. The Mets made Sunday a “gold†game, which means tickets are priced at the second highest tier. But attendance over all has slipped 14 percent, to 33,451 per game, this year, perhaps because the buzz has worn off the new stadium.
With the Mets fading in the pennant race, Shannon Stark at the Mets Police blog has called on fans to rally around their team on Sunday. What better way, he said, to show support for this year’s team than to show up and honor the last Mets championship squad.
http://bats.blogs.nytimes.com/2010/07/27/tickets-left-for-mets-hall-of-fame-day/
