Let's pretend you have $35 to spend. Check that;
$35 Bleacher Seat Ticket
$10 Parking
$5 Program
+ $n Food/Drink
Okay, let's pretend you have $50. What would you do with it? Pay a credit card bill? Pay a utility bill? Feed yourself for a week? Blow it on a night out? Donate it to Dick Cheney's Defense Fund?
Let's say you decide to blow it on a night out at the ol' ballpark or in this case a once great place to watch a baseball game and now an overworked symbol of personal greed.
$35 will get you into an American League Division Series game. $10 will let you park in the broken glass and shards Network Associates Coliseum parking lot sure to be filled with numerous treasures less than 48 hours removed from an Oakland Raider home game of tailgating. Not to mention at least $5 for a program and whatever you decide to eat or drink.
Depending on your appetite and/or shred ability to discern what exactly is edible you're really looking at blowing closer to $65-$70 on a night out.
Let's go a bit further and mention it's not a night out, it's a day out. A 1:08 PM (PST) start time means you have to miss at least 6 hours to a full day of work to go to the game. Roughly speaking, this $35 is now costing you $150 and change.
Is it worth it?
Any moron without a job will say, "Yah, it's worth it."
What if you didn't consider that MLB would hold weekday playoff games on the West Coast?
You didn't ask for the time off and now you have to play sick and then try to explain your sunburn. Too early for explaining that facial blotch on snowboarding.
Can you afford to fake a horrible injury?
Dr. Nick Riviera asks how can you not afford to?
WOW, WE ENVY GIANTS FANS
In a move both crippling and ego stripping, we find ourselves jealous of Giants fans who can buy their playoff tickets for bleecher seats for $15.
The A's Ownership have gone against their last shred of decency and decided to make their profits off the back of the 'cheap seat' crowd during the playoffs. By jacking up ticket prices 500% for a $7 ticket, the ownership has secured themselves a hefty payday, should everyone bite.
Single Game Prices
Diamond Level Regular Season $150Diamond Level Division Series $165Diamond Level AL Champ Series $200Diamond Level World Series $250Field Box Regular Season $60Field Box Division Series $75Field Box AL Champ Series $85Field Box World Series $190MVP Regular Season $27MVP Division Series $50MVP AL Champ Series $65MVP World Series $175Field Level Regular Season $22Field Level Division Series $50Field Level AL Champ Series $65Field Level World Series $175Plaza Club Regular Season $32Plaza Club Division Series $45Plaza Club AL Champ Series $60Plaza Club World Series $145Plaza Level Infield Regular Season $20Plaza Level Infield Division Series $45Plaza Level Infield Champ Series $60Plaza Level Infield Series $145Plaza Level Regular Season $16Plaza Level Division Series $45Plaza Level AL Champ Series $60Plaza Level World Series $145Upper Reserved Regular Season $8Upper Reserved Division Series $35Upper Reserved AL Champ Series $55Upper Reserved World Series $110Bleachers Regular Season $7Bleachers Division Series $35Bleachers AL Champ Series $55Bleachers World Series $110
However, the A's have been snake bitten twice in the last two years by the Yankees in the Division Series. The smart move was to wait out the Division Series and snatch up League Championship tickets and World Series tickets should the A's be able to stay upright for a five game series against the Minnesota Twins.
While that may have been the smart move, the smart money is on anyone with enough disposable income to afford more expensive seats. Lower infield seats are only $10 more than bleecher seats despite the price fixing.
What's left is a lot of people who make $12 an hour who saw 15-20 games this year unable to watch the same team they supported for seven months leach onto the teet of someone who can throw a few hundred dollars around and not think twice about it.
If any of us were still in college we could probably use our grant and student loan money to work something out. But, now that we're out of college, that money is going toward paying back our student loans.
Math Major=NerdEconomics Major=Stuffed ShirtBusiness Major=Scum of the Earth
Here's the thinking of A's ownership in black and off-white. The A's need to get as much cash as they can now before the revenue sharing cycle kicks in next year. Any money the A's make this post-seaosn is going to be ear marked for Miguel Tejada after 2003 and Eric Chavez in 2004. The A's need this disposable cash to sign a free agent in the off seaosn and keep together a nucleus of yong players and a few cagey veterans.
That sounds nice, but in actuality, Ken Hoffman is looking to repeal the tag of silent owner and go the way most 80 year old business men who don't own the Minnesota Twins go. The guy wants to get his estate in order before he dies.
In order to do that, he'd like a nice golden umbrella from Schott and Schott would like to use the surplus cash to buy out his partner.
Schott is licking his chops because the A's are nearing new talks for a baseball only facility in the Bay Area and the thought of selling out a ballpark as fans shell out every night is probably making him sweat with anticipation.
Quick Math
The A's sell out the first two games of the Division Series:
Tickets Sales=$2.7 million
Product Sales=$1 million
Concessions=$500,000
Parking=$250,000
PAYDAY=Roughly $4.5 MILLION per Division Series Game
Do you wonder why home field advantage is important to the owners?
IRONY SUCKS
So, we're going to sit around and wait for a rich Uncle to get softer in the head or a bag full of money to show up on our porches.
Other than that we see now way of being able to attend the first round of the playoffs.
To boot, we're not sure we could afford to miss the time away from our jobs. With economy being, for a lack of a better term; as a stable as the elastic in Al Newman's underwear, we can't afford to be fired or go jobless.
The only alternative is to tune into the games from work in the hopes our colleagues get caught up in the fever of playoff baseball.
WHERE'S THE NEW ADVENTURES OF WINNIE THE POOH?
Like last year, the suits at MLB have decided to sublet Siberian Television to broadcast the 'lesser games' of the playoffs. Of course, soap operas are much more important to the public so ESPN/ABC/MLB won't pre-empt General Hospital for basbeall. More of MLB marketing 101.
Wouldn't you want to open the demographic to people who are at home in the middle of the day? Is it any wonder that the two small market clubs are playing each other on ABC's Family Channel?
A large portion of cable companies and satellite/dish packages don't even include this stepchild of a fourth rated network (can you name five (5) shows on ABC that you watch on a regular basis, besides MNF?).
More of Kaiser Bud's machinations at work, here;
"Let's put the two best stories in baseball in the corner and focus on St. Louis, Arizona and New York. They have big payrolls so should they have better ratings. We know about running Major League Baseball so we know how to run network TV, too. Look at how well we advertise the game and talk it up every chance we get. I didn't get the name Seligula for being an evil tyrant with no clear agenda for nothing, I had to try and kill baseball first."
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