Today is the last day for partial season ticket holders to renew.
Our crew should be gleefully entering our 25th year as Met seat holders. The Mets should be recognizing this accomplishment and our record of investing in the team.
Instead, the Loge13 refugees - 12 seats strong -- are not renewing today. We will possibly renew later, if the Mets make some reasonable accommodations. The folks we have spoken with in the ticket office are very nice so far. But we'll see.
The New York Times has a timely story on the subject today. There are probably many thousands of people ignore this extended deadline today. Do the right thing, Mets.
Here be the article:
With the Mets on the verge of signing Jason Bay to fill one of their
biggest needs, a left fielder, the question arises: Who, literally,
will notice Bay next season?
One of the biggest complaints from Mets fans about Citi Field
last season was the obstructed views from the seats in left field. From
the highest of the three decks, many fans could not see the left
fielder, the warning track or the fence, and sometimes could not see
the center fielder, either. Fans in the lower decks also struggled to
see plays in left field, and often had to crane their necks to watch
replays on televisions hanging above them.
Mets executives have defended Citi Field's geometry, saying that the partly obscured views of the field are the tradeoff for putting fans closer to the action.
In good times, a debate over stadium sight lines would be a
footnote. But these are not the best of times. Many Mets fans are
frustrated by the team's dismal 2009 season and by their uncertain
prospects in 2010. Other than Bay, the Mets have not made any big
off-season moves.
Fans have also voiced concerns about the cost of tickets. That
issue, combined with the discontent over the team and some of the
views, has left some fans in no mood to renew their season-ticket plans
by Thursday's deadline, which had already been extended earlier this
month.
"For the life of me, I don't know why I'd want those seats again,"
said Len Jokubaitis, who had a Saturday plan with two seats in the top
row of Section 531 in left field. He was one of more than two dozen
fans who talked to The New York Times about their ticket plans for
2010. "I wish the team well and I'd love to see them turn it around,
but I just don't think they are worth it right now."
Jokubaitis said he would go to fewer games next season and search
for single-game tickets on StubHub. He is willing to pay more than face
value for those tickets, he said, because he will be freed from the
risk of being left with tickets he cannot resell, something he said
happened repeatedly last year.
Fans sitting in the outfield are not the only ones making other
plans. Ominously for the team, fans like Jamie Schreck are also taking
a pass. He had two seats in the Metropolitan Bronze level last season
that cost an average of $150 per ticket. But the team's poor play, the
relative lack of free-agent signings and the slim resale market for his
seats persuaded Schreck to opt for single-game tickets in 2010.
"I'll probably go to the same amount of games that I did last year,
but I'll remove the stress of having to get rid of the 50 or 60 games
that I don't want to go to," he said.
Acquiring Bay,
he said, will help the team. But, he added, "there's got to be a very
strong chance of them going to the playoffs year after year to justify
these prices."
To induce fans like Schreck to buy new plans, the Mets cut ticket
prices by as much as 20 percent on some seats. The price of Schreck's
seats, though, fell just 3.3 percent. In the sections farthest from
home plate, where many holders of partial season tickets plans sit,
prices were mostly unchanged.
That includes the Promenade Reserved sections in deep left field, where tickets cost as little as $11 a game.
Mets officials declined to say what percentage of their
season-ticket holders have renewed their plans, or what impact they
expect the Bay signing will have on ticket sales. The team, of course,
may still make some significant off-season moves, but even that might
not satisfy every disgruntled fan. For instance, one fan named Jay,
writing on The New York Times's Bats blog, listed an array of reasons
for not renewing his tickets on the promenade level, including the
location of his seats and the lack of access to some of the stadium's
clubs.
What seemed to really set him off, though, was the team not meeting his request for a Johan Santana bobble head doll.
"Well, it's been two years and I reminded him every time I spoke
with him," Jay wrote on Bats Blog about his conversations with a Mets
ticket-sales representative. "But he has no problem calling me every
week or so asking when I'm going to renew."
F.Y,I,--As of today, the 15 Game Renewal Link is off mets.com. However, the Season & 40 Game is still there. They may be nice on the phone, but actions speak Louder than words...