More Ticket Issues-Lack of Integrity

While I doubt feel that many employees in the NYY Ticket Office may be a little dense; they should not assume the licensess are. My latest round with the ticket office goes this way:

Monday, 9AM, March 2, 2009, Greg from the Ticket Office leaves a voice mail on my house phone about Section 132. Please call him back, he will hold the seats till Tuesday.

At 3PM, my assigned ticket rep, Rosa Muniz calls me, again about Section 132, she call the cell. We have an engaging conversation that goes like this:

Rosa: "Everything you heard is wrong, its just fans show are trying to cause trouble. All ticket holders with seniority of 2006 or higher got their requests, anyone in 2007, 2008 0r 2009 got nothing".

Personally I know that is a load of horse poop. And today I find out form another colleague, also a NYY fan, the ticket office tells them nowhere and no answers when they call.

I have till Friday to exercise my license. I am on fence, leaning towards not renewing. I have this ethical situation with what i consider fair market value. Most of the seats in Yankee Stadium are priced beyond fair market value, more towards their value from Stub Hub, then a direct dealer.

I really think it is time baseball fans stood up along with all sports fans and did something about this. Unfortunately we get seduced into ticket plans, which gives us a season of accessibility. I am not easily seduced, and I have better uses for my pile of Yankee ticket money:

1. Purchase a 42 inch flat screen and a DVR.

2. Purchase 4 tickets to Opening Day from a fair market value scalper I know.

3. Purchase tickets to games, with enough seats I can take my niece and toddler nephew.

4. Do a few road trips to away games to protest this trend in baseball to price premium games with inflated values.

5. Spend time and money of what is left to get laws passed regarding fair market value pricing.

Note: I have spent some money with my favorite Voodoo priestess, Sabrina, commissioning a doll of Lon Trost. As I sit in my scalper purchased Opening Day seats, I will be stabbing Lon in enough places that he will be in pain. Sabrina makes a quality Voodoo doll, and she practices fair market value.

Finally my greatest issue these days is with the lack of integrity, in reality bold fat lies being told to me by the Ticket Office. Fans speak to each other, after many years, I know many other licensees. We all got the same line of B/S. The New York Yankees, an organization that takes pride in the integrity of their heroic hall of fame players, is now a den of liars.

I hate liars, I think they should all have their tongues cut out.

Don't ever lie to me, the consequences will not be to your liking.

Update on my NYY Ticket License

On Friday, while I was in San Diego for business, I got a call from the the ticket office of the New York Yankees.

This was clearly in response to my emails and decline of the crappy seats in the bleachers I was offered. Hey maybe they even suspect that I was the one who wen to the Daily News. I did, after the first article, but can't take credit for the bad publicity being generated.

Now Shamir, from the NYY Ticket Office told me I had the opportunity to buy a 41 game plan of field level seats (reality the right field field bleachers, seats no benches); for the mere cost of $8020 plus tax, shipping and handling for 2 seats. I said no, put me in the pool.

The seats offered in reality would have cost $25.00 in the old stadium given there locations (see picture, gray area in right field). They are in fact where in the 1923 Stadium the Bleacher Creatures sat. Who knows where the Yankees have stuck that loyal and crazy group of fans. And the Operations Management of the New York Yankees clearly are living in fantasy land and not have no reality. They have lost their minds.

Also the person who read my letter and passed it on clearly does not get that I have not budgeted $8000-9000 for seats. I really do want what I had and I am not willing to pay more than $50.00 a seat.

Clearly the overpriced seats are not selling or I would not have received a phone call on Friday. And The call was a hard sell. Since I was in between sessions in conference, I gracefully told them they were out of their mind, out of touch with the real fans and to put me in the pool. I anticipate I will not get what I want. The Yankees are determined to stick it to the fans in hopes that someone will be crazy enough to overpay for these highly overpriced seats.

Had the seats actually been along the infield base lines I might have jumped at them. Those seats in the old stadium ran between $75-95 a piece/game. Those seats by the way are now between $300-500 a piece/game.

Despite my business travel, I heard the interview Lon Trost gave to WFAN. Clearly he too is one of the COOs that is out of touch with the economic situation. He clearly is drunk with power, believing that Yankee fans will pay anything. He does not realize that the good times have passed, and like all empires, the Yankee Empire is falling; and he is one of the reasons why.

But don't despair fellow Yankee fans, all empires rise and fall and the Yankees always go through these cycles.

Oh how I wish George Steinbrenner was still the healthy active Kaiser and in charge. Instead the inmates are clearly running the asylum.