Giants World Series Trophy Tour

The San Francisco Giants have announced the Official World Series Trophy Tour.  It's coming to a town near you, if, that is, you live in Northern California, western Nevada, southern Oregon, Scottsdale, AZ, New York City or Cooperstown, NY.  Well, in late January or early February, it's coming to a town very near to me.  So, I'm liking the possibility of going to see it in person.  Fans can have their picture taken with the trophy, but that will cost a yet to be determined amount of money.

Now, that should be some fun.

New Uniforms for The World Champion Giants?

The Giants have won the World Series, their sixth trophy since the first Series played in 1903.  Will the Giants come out with new uniforms as a result in 2011?  Well, after they won their first WS in 1905, the Giants made a change in their 1906 uniforms.  John McGraw thought it necessary to show everybody who they were playing.  So, they promptly removed the traditional "NY" from their jerseys and replaced it with the identifier of "WORLD'S CHAMPIONS."  To see the transition, click here.  For a closeup of the '06 threads, click here.  These come from a great section of the Hall of Fame website, called "Dressed to the Nines," detailing the uniforms for every team in history.

I'm not expecting a big change to their already classic uni's.  But just think how such a thing would go over today.

Giants Victory Parade

Before this last Wednesday, the largest crowd I had ever been in was a Giants road game I saw in Denver in 1993, the Rockies' expansion year, in Mile High Stadium.  This was before Coors Field was built.  The attendance that day was 72,431.  I can't remember any other big events I attended with a crowd that large.

But Wednesday was a special day.  At the last minute, early in the morning, we decided to go to the San Francisco Giants World Series victory parade.  About 1 million fans showed up.  Driving into The City was out of the question, so we had to take public transportation, on the BART (Bay Area Rapid Transit) train.  We picked the furthest station in our town because the parking situation is always much better.  We drove by the closest station on our way there, and there were hundreds of people walking down the sidewalks of every street we could see, all dressed in orange and black.  Wow.  On to our destination station.  It was packed, and a line for train tickets was about a hundred yards long.  Ouch.  On to the last station on the line, in Pittsburg.  Same story.  The line was through the station, over the freeway, and about 50 yards out into the parking lot.  I used to live a block away, so I knew where to park.  As we entered the station lot, some fans turned us around and told us to go to the Safeway grocery store on the corner, as they sold BART tickets at a discount.  That line was five minutes long.  Thank you, whoever you are!

We proceeded into the station and to the furthest extent of the station to catch the last car.  We saw a friend, Sean, who works in the City, and had to go back home because none of the vanpool vehicles he took to work every day were picking anybody up.  The train completely filled up two stations later, and everybody else along the line was out of luck.  It was a wall of orange inside the train.  The train stations were so filled with people eager to get on the trains, the operator couldn't close the doors.  It took a while to even get to San Francisco.

We exited at the Civic Center station, the closest station to the parade end destination.  Once out, we entered a sea of people semi-jockying for position.  We didn't arrive until after the parade had started at the other end, and it would be a while before it got to us.  I had a radio, so I was able to tell when they were going to turn the corner onto the final street on the way to city hall.  The kids couldn't see, as they were too small, and even I couldn't see because we were too far away.  We could hear the crowd gain in volume around the corner as the parade approached, and when it hit our area, a huge roar erupted.  The caravan angled away from us, and I think I saw announcers Duane Kuiper and Mike Krukow, and Lincecum's hair.  That was it.  The kids were tired, and I was satisfied.  A much needed ice cream cart passed by as we were leaving, so that bought us maybe a half hour more in a celebratory atmosphere.

We missed the speeches and all, but saw them later on TV.  As the kids were eating ice cream on a low planter wall, a few people down was a lady that sits behind me in my Wednesday night class.  How cool.  She wore her colors all semester, and I would see her later that evening.  She recorded a bunch of stuff on her Flip.  Anyway, the kids finished their ice cream and we headed back toward BART.  But one problem: there were thousands of people heading out to the plaza.  As many people as were leaving, many times more were just arriving.  The station was a zoo, and one exit was completely shut down due to heavy foot traffic.  We got a seat on the train home, trying to beat what commute there would be, and made it home without a problem.  It was exciting just to say we went, and I'm sure I'll look back on the parade with a sense of completion.  What a season.

Game 1 Observations

Torture.  Anti-torture.  Game 1 was anti-torture.  Torture is when everything comes down to the ninth inning in a one-run game and Wilson lets several runners on before striking the last batter out on a full count.  NLCS torture.

Anti-torture is when all of that happens at the beginning of the game.  Like when Tim Lincecum has a brain fart and doesn't throw the ball in a run-down.  Like when Freddy Sanchez gets doubled off second on a blooper that Bad Vlad simply can't catch.  Like when Benjie Molina tries to score on a sac fly, and he's out by ten feet, except that the throw is half way up the first base line.  And like when the Giants beat the best playoff pitcher ever to be born by racking up seven runs on him before the fifth inning is over, making sure that there won't be a one-run game.  Scary.

What can you say about 18 runs, 25 hits, 6 errors, a double by an AL pitcher setting up Molina scoring on a sac fly, the Giants bullpen giving up 3 runs in the ninth inning in a game started by Lee and Lincecum?  This was as bizarre a game as I can remember.  Check out this summary by McCovey Chronicles.  Giants up 1-0 over the Rangers.  Holding my breath, turning purple.

Final - San Francisco 11, Texas 7
San Francisco takes a 1-0 Series lead

Blog Bat-round: If I Were Commissioner

[Update: since this blog bat-around was started among the baseball card blogger circles, I'm cross-posting it to my 1974 Topps baseball card blog.]

David at Indians Baseball Cards & Random Wax poses the following question for a blog bat-around:

The topic: With Bud Selig supposedly retiring in 2012 (and assuming the end of the world doesn't follow soon afterward), if YOU were asked to become the next Baseball Commissioner, what would you do?  What changes would you like to make, what things would you leave as-is, what would you like to see as your legacy when your retirement time came?

Baseball has been screwed up under Bud Selig far beyond the average fan's knowledge.  I'll expose a number of those dark secrets below and as commissioner, I would make the following changes, unilaterally, on my first day in office:

On the field changes:

1. Expansion to 32 teams w/ realignment.  Either 8 divisions of 4 teams with no wild card, or 4 divisions of 8 teams w/ top two in each.  There needs to be the same number of teams in each division.  Right now, statistically, the AL West teams have a 50% greater chance of winning the World Series than NL Central teams, just by being in the AL West.
2. Use an unbalanced, but symmetrical schedule.  Baseball needs each team playing each other team the exact same number of times in division, and same number of games with all teams out of the division, both home and road, from division to division, league to league, and those numbers have to be even numbers.  Teams in the same division need to have the same common scheduled teams.  Having divisions logically means an unbalanced schedule.  Each division needs an even number of teams so that only division play occurs the last weeks of the season.
3. Eliminate interleague play.  The players hate it.  Attendance figures from largely weekend games when school's out and the weather is nice is not evidence that the fans support it either.  And the argument that fans never get to see players from the other league is bogus.  A majority of baseball fans live either in a metro area that already has one team in each league (the five largest markets - ten teams worth!, NY, LA, Chi, SF, and DC/Balt), or in a metro area that is a short drive from another team in the other league. (Philly, San Diego, Milwaukee, Pittsburgh, Cleveland, Detroit, etc.)  Interleague play also skews the division race, as schedules are not identical.  For too long, the Marlins have skated with playing six games against the hapless Rays while their division rival Mets have played six games against the World Champs.  Enough.
4. The All-Star game will no longer decide Home Field Advantage in the World Series, and will revert back to alternating HFA between leagues each year.  All-Star managers aren't able to focus on winning the game anyway, because two other expectations are more important: a) keeping other managers' pitchers from being injured, and b) making sure every player on an ever enlarging roster makes it into the game.  A pinch runner for the batter who pinch hit for the defensive replacement from last inning?  Hey, I just put three players into the game in four pitches!  That's what the last three innings of the ASG have become.
5. Reduce the All-Star rosters to 24 max. and eliminate the "each team has one player" rule.  Only one thing is less logical that requiring one player from each team, and that's the argument for it:  "It's a fan's game."  Uhm, the fans of the other 29 teams don't want to see your least worst player in the ASG when he's batting .279/11/36 at the break.  He gets to play just because every other player on your team sucks even worse?  And you want him to play in the ASG?  Heck, you don't even want to see him play in your own ballpark.  If you did, your attendance wouldn't suck so bad.  I've lived through plenty of bad A's and Giants seasons where I was actually embarrassed for our representative to be seen in the introductions, not to mention the game.
6. Eliminate all the NFL rules that have been adopted into baseball, like the one that made George Steinbrenner an air traffic controller.  Get rid of all the NFL tie-breaking, home field advantage and playoff matchup rules.  All they do is complicate things and screw playoff ticket holders out of being able to use their tickets effectively.  Football has these stupid rules precisely because they have no way to decide things on the field.  Using head-to-head as a tie-breaker necessarily means that the winner has a worse record against inferior teams.  Hasn't anybody at MLB corporate ever taken logic 101 at their local community college?  Home field advantage and matchup rules mean that ticket holders don't even know when the game is and who it's against for the ticket they're holding in their hand.  Last year's fiasco that allowed the Yanks (HFA) to choose which ALDS series to play in was a great example.  They didn't have to choose until a few hours after the regular season was over.  But there was a rain-out makeup on Monday that forced another one-game playoff on Tuesday, still part of the regular season.  They got to decide whether to screw the Red Sox in choosing which day they played - hours before their game - or to make the other team play on a couple of hours sleep on the plane while in the air at 35,000 feet.
7. Eliminate TV ratings based playoff start times.  The Yankees are guaranteed the prime time slot for every game ever, while the rest of the teams play bizarre day games in weird time zones.  Every time a series is decided, the remaining series have their time slots revised according to a pecking order of prime time ratings.  Several times since this has started, fans of one team with tickets in hand for tomorrow's game have gone to bed not knowing whether the next day's game would be at 1pm or 7pm because an extra inning game in the other league on the opposite coast that was playing past midnight may end that series and effect start times of all other games the next day because the ratings pecking order had to be rearranged.  When you're a ticket holder for these games, you may be screwed out of hundreds or thousands of dollars because you can't sell or give away a day game ticket at the last minute.  It's happened several times to me personally.  Enough.
8. Allow each home team to set the time for its own division series playoff games.  Not being able to go to or even watch your own team because you're at work and you fell into a day game slot at the last minute just because some dude on the east coast wants to watch it on TV is freaking lame.  Let them stay up until 2am.  That way, everybody will be able to see it.
9. All post season game dates with pre-figured division vs. division arrangement will be made prior to the season.
10. Even though I personally don't like the DH, I would keep it for one league.  It's good for baseball because it is good at starting and keeping arguments going.  But the current DH rule gives the AL team an advantage in the World Series.  It gets to keep using its full-time, season long hitting specialist, while the NL team must scrape a utility player off the bench for its DH.  If you don't agree, please tell me you'd rather see Lee Lacy hit than Reggie Jackson.  After the last game of the regular season, I would give all the NL teams the option to draft one free agent AL DH player to use as their DH in the World Series, just to even things up.

Off the field changes:

1. Lifetime bans would extend only to the lifetime of the player.  For example, once he died, Shoeless Joe would be in the HOF.
2. Change the territorial rights boundary from a distance based boundary (75 miles) to a population based one.  The existing rule guarantees the Yankees an untouchable fan base of 25 million.  Even though San Jose is 40 miles further from San Francisco than Oakland is, the Giants territorial rights can stop an A's move to SJ.  Why?  If small market teams have problems making ends meet, they can move to Brooklyn and/or East Rutherford, Chicago, San Bernardino, San Fernando, or San Jose.
3. Holding the dubious distinction as the only person to have the steroids scandal occur right under his nose both as an owner and as a commissioner; and holding the dubious distinction as a commissioner who wouldn't even stand up in recognition that the greatest record in sports was just tied, and also in reference to the other 12 reasons listed above, my last act on the first day in office will be to impose a lifetime ban from baseball upon Bud Selig.

Leave as-is:

1. Most everything else.

Legacy will take care of itself.

Fan Ejected By Ump For Heckling

I'm sure this ain't the first time, but a fan was ejected from a game by umpire Bob Davidson for heckling a player.  Sean Ottow, a Brewer fan, was heckling Cardinals' catcher Yadier Molina.  Davidson had a mean streak already going in ejecting a number of players and managers that game, so a fan was what was needed to complete the day.  Maybe that counts for "hitting for the cycle" in umpire dialect.  Maybe ejecting a fan is like that final triple needed.

I found two brief accounts of the incident here and here.  One thing the fan claimed is that he never swore at Molina.  But, he was cited for disorderly conduct by the police.

I'm wondering what he said and for how long.  I've also had extended time periods of heckling players - like nine innings a day over a four game series - and I've never been ejected.  But maybe it's like my friend Mike says, we'd be tossed in jail today for some of the things we said back in the 80's.  I'm also wondering if his citation was a direct result of being tossed by the ump.  Would he have been cited if the ump never tossed him?  And since he got a standing ovation from the crowd, one wonders how disorderly he actually was.  They all seemed to enjoy him.  Now for a serious question.  Will he be banned from future Brewers games by management?  Loss of season tickets?  Could any of this happen to a fan simply because an ump had a bad day?  What role can a player have in getting a fan tossed?  One time, I was heckling a rookie and he called time out and jogged in to the third base ump and pointed out at me.  The ump shrugged his shoulders, and then he really caught it from the whole bleacher section for the rest of the game.

It will be interesting to see if this is the last thing to be heard on this incident.

Stephen Strasburg's Arm, RIP

The hottest prospect in recent memory just blew his elbow out and will require Tommy John surgery.  This carries a 12-18 month rehab time.  Strasburg has been just about the biggest story of the year.  I'm really sorry to hear this happen to such a young, bright star. 

What interests me most about this story is that some people predicted this would happen.  Curt Schilling apparently did, and I heard an audio clip of a radio interview from earlier in the year of Chris Lincecum (father of Tim, and master mechanics planner of his delivery, who has his own show on in San Fran) saying he witnessed some problems with Strasburg's mechanics and wasn't very confident of his future health.  Now, I'm no expert on pitching mechanics.  But I'm wondering what was going on in the minds of the Nationals' people, especially given that others were concerned.  Were there issues?  Were they in the process of being addressed?  Is the topic of mechanics widely understood within baseball?  Is it merely a matter of opinion with several radically different schools of thought?  Are most baseball people clueless with only a few experts on the topic?

I don't know.  But it's sad for Strasburg, his family and the Nationals, not to mention the game of baseball.  I hope he recovers fully and has a hall of fame career.

Bobby Thomson, RIP

Bobby Thomson, the former Giants player who hit the most famous home run in baseball history, died yesterday at the age of 86.  His "Shot Heard 'Round The World" off of Dodger pitcher Ralph Branca ended the greatest pennant race in history between the two fiercest rivals in history in the media capitol of the world.  That's probably why it's so famous.  It's also the most famous radio broadcast in sports history, called by Giants announcer Russ Hodges.

On August 11, 1951, the New York Giants were 13 1/2 games behind their cross-town rivals the Brooklyn Dodgers.  The Giants won 37 of their last 44 games to tie the Dodgers for first place on the last day of the regular season, forcing a three game playoff for the pennant.  The teams split the first two games, and the Dodgers had a 4-1 lead in the ninth inning of game 3.  The Giants started a rally, and after closing the score to 4-2, Thomson came to bat with two runners on base.  Two pitches later, history was made.

Here's a video of the home run as shown on Best Damn Sports Show Period.  It was edited down, very unfortunately, to fit their show, and due to copyright reasons, I'm guessing, the unedited version just doesn't show up on the internet.  Also, there is a story and a video clip on mlb.com that shows a bit more of what happened after the traditional recording of Russ Hodges' call ends.  Then for further listening pleasure, a video of Hall of Fame broadcasters Ernie Harwell and Red Barber on their TV coverage of that game.

A strange twist to this home run changed the way sports broadcasts were handled from then on.  Recordings of radio broadcasts of great events simply weren't done in those days.  But a Dodger fan got out his tape recorder in the last inning of a would-be Dodger victory and made a recording of what he thought would be Hodges' lament over a Giants defeat, just to rub it in the face of Giants fans.  Here's a blog article dealing with that history.  All in all, a great homer by a true gentleman.

Trivia question:  What rookie was on deck when Thomson hit his famous homer?

1974 Topps Set - My New Baseball Card Blog

I have a new blog I just started, 1974 Topps Set.  This blog is chronicling my collection of 1974 Topps cards.  Although I started collecting in 1971, the '74 set is the first I went wild on, when I was just ten.  I'm scanning each card in my set, and I have nearly all of them.  If you enjoy baseball cards, take a look.

Classic Rivalry Game, or, Don Mattingly for Manager of the Year

Last night's game between the Giants and Dodgers at Dodger Stadium was a classic rivalry game. It had all the marks of those games you don't see anywhere else with any other opponent. A promising pitching matchup between Lincecum and Kershaw turned into a beanball war, ejections and a bizarre rulebook application that led to the game winning hit in the 9th inning.

The Dodgers had a commanding 5-1 lead, but the Giants chipped away. A previous beanball war from April was resurrected, and three Dodgers were ejected. The bench coach, then Kershaw and Torre (the manager gets ejected after warnings are issued), leaving hitting coach Don Mattingly at the acting manager. Then in the 9th after the Giants got runners on 2nd and 3rd and Johnathan Broxton intentionally walking the bases loaded to set up a double play (the Giants were down by one), Mattingly paid a visit to the mound. As he left, James Loney asked him a question, prompting Mattingly to turn back around to the mound. But, as the rules state, once a manager leaves the dirt circle, that concludes his trip to the mound. Brucy Bochy alertly caught this, and called it to the attention of the umpires. The umps ruled that Mattingly turning around and stepping back on the mound was his second trip. Broxton was removed from the game, and since there was nobody warming up in the Dodger bullpen, a reliever had to enter the game without any warmups! Andres Torres followed up with a double off the wall, and the Giants took the lead and held on. See the video of Mattingly's rookie blunder here.

What a game. I just love it when the Dodgers melt down in such a huge matchup. I wish I were there in LA to see it, full Giants gear, letting the Dodger Stadium faithful know who screwed up.

The Best Retro Uni Night Ever

Last night, probably the best ever turn-back-the-clock night for uniforms took place. Yes, it was 70's retro uniform night at a certain game. Of course, when a baseball fan thinks of the wildest uni's of the 70's, it is immediately clear that such an event could only happen in an interleague contest. And the "best" 70's uniforms in all of baseball were worn by none other than the Oakland A's and the Pittsburgh Pirates. It was also 1970's Joe Rudi replica jersey night in Oakland.

The A's wore their California Gold double-knit polyester pajama pullovers with their gold pants and green stirrup socks, with Kelly green hats and yellow bills. Also typical of the 70's A's, the coaches and managers wore the white hats with the green bills. The official uniform colors used to be "Kelly green, California gold and wedding gown white." The "Swingin' A's" logo was also used. The Pirates wore their black pajama pullover tops, black pants, gold stirrups and those (n)ever classic "cylinder" gold top hats with the three pinstripes. It was pure disco. To compound the look, all the announcers, TV crews, stadium personnel and the like wore afros, "porn star" mustaches and/or comb-around hair-do's. They brought back total homer A's announcer Monty Moore who even brought a cow bell to ring when the A's hit a dinger. The announcers had old fashioned microphones with the giant foam ball pop protectors, and creme-gold type sport coats with wide lapels and the rounded lowercase font "csn" (Comcast Sports Net) letters, reminiscent of the 70's ABC's Wild World of Sports. Even a few turtleneck sweaters and tie-dye t-shirts were seen here and there.

The stats graphics across the TV screen mocked the old plain block yellow letters used back then before the newer computer generated ones. The fans got into the act, too, wearing all the old colors and styles. It must have been fun.

Orange Friday

Another uniform change made this year for the 2010 Giants is that they're wearing orange tops on home Friday games. The uni style and letter font remain the same as the standard uni, but the color is orange. I'm not used to this yet, and the uni's look a bit bold as can be seen by this Giants TV commercial.  The Giants wore orange tops as part of a rotating uni (along with white and black tops) back in the '77-'82 time span.

Back in the early 2000's, the Giants wore black jerseys on Friday, both at home and on the road, but these were done away with because they weren't the traditional uni's. Bonds hit his 71st and record breaking home run in a black top. Last night's game between the Giants and Red Sox just didn't look like the Giants vs. Red Sox. The Giants wore their orange, while the Sox wore their blue tops and gray pants.

For several years now, the Giants have had Orange Friday, but it has been the fans who wore orange to the games, including some rad 70's style orange afros here and there. Now the Giants themselves have joined their own promo. The jury is still out.

Perfect Blown Call

We've all heard about (and seen!) Armando Galarraga's perfect game and umpire Jim Joyce's blown call with two outs in the ninth inning that took it away. First, that sucks. But this raises, yet again, the debate over instant replay, and how it should be used.

Before I get to instant replay, let me just say that I'm glad that baseball has resorted in the last few years to umpires having a discussion with each other to correct calls just after they are made. This is a huge improvement over letting an obvious bad call go. For those who make a big issue about human error being part of baseball, umpires second-guessing themselves actually affirms the human factor of error, and adds the human factor of wanting to correct ourselves to make us better. So, I'm all for that. I'm not sure if the other umpires were in a position to correct Joyce on the field and on the spot, as they might not have seen the play well enough.

Now, I'm going to ask whether instant replay should be a factor at all in getting the call right. We already have a limited instant replay for home run calls, either whether the ball clears the fence or if it were fair or foul. This system isn't fool proof, as I personally witnessed the instant replay blunder in San Francisco (I was just yards away from the fence when the ball hit) that had the call reversed, creating a pinch-runner and eliminating a player from the game, and I wrote about it here. In my estimation, instant replay should only be used in limited circumstances, as its use can affect the way baseball is played as a game.

We all want to "get it right." But we all also recognize the human element in doing so. Instant replay is no guarantee to getting it right, as the NFL has proven. There are several ideas about how to use instant replay in baseball, with objections as to how it will affect the game. I'll have to write more about this in upcoming posts.

Giants Uniform Changes for 2010

The Giants have introduced two uniform changes for 2010. First, they're using an orange-billed hat on Sundays, similar to the hat they wore from about 1977 to 1982. Second, they're applying the "Orange Fridays" theme, where fans have been encouraged to wear orange to the Friday games for the last so many years, to their uni tops. They're now wearing orange tops, similar to the ones from the same '77-'82 period, except with the current traditional block letters. Another small change is an optional display of three orange stripes around the upper calf of their black socks for those players who like to show the full sock. I'll write about each of these things a bit more.

2010 Giants Win Projection

I have been doing a few years worth of Giants Loss Projections ( 2008 and 2009 ) based on their current winning percentage. I've shown their record, day to day, and how many losses that projects to at the end of 162 games. I've posted these results essentially twice a month. Since the Giants had been a losing team for four years, I stated I would continue the loss projection each year until they had a winning year. Well, 2009 was a winning year. So, I'm doing a 2010 win projection. I'll post their projections through April 15 soon, then another after the close of April 30's play.

New Marlins Ballpark In 2012

A new ballpark for the Florida Marlins is under construction and scheduled to open for the 2012 season. The park will have a retractable roof and be built on the Orange Bowl site. There is hope for increased attendance due to the new park, but if Pittsburgh is any indication, I'm not going to hold my breath. The Marlins have fans that show up just about World Series time. Will a new stadium work? Is Miami a baseball town?

Nevertheless, it will be good to see the team play in some venue other than a football stadium. At only 37,000 seats, the small crowds won't look as small. It will be yet another park to add to my "need to see" list, which right now consists of all parks I've yet to see along with parks I desire to see again.

New Twins Ballpark in 2010

This year yet another new ballpark will open. Minneapolis has built Target Field for the Twins. It looks okay. I say this because the new ballpark rage has gotten old. But, it's another new park that I will want to add to my "visited" collection. For that reason, I like it.

Also, the Metrodome will no longer be of service to baseball. Hooray! The Twinkiedome can now be the home of the Vikings, and we'll never have to wonder again if the Twins blow the air conditioning out for them and in for visiting teams. I never visited the Metrodome, although I walked by it in the off season while in Minneapolis once. I have mixed feelings about not seeing it. I wish I could have seen all those parks that have been replaced in my baseball lifetime, so if Major League baseball is played somewhere, I want to see it.

I'll be looking for the new park on TV sometime in April.

Steroids and The Hall of Fame

Grant at McCovey Chronicles pens his opinion on the way the steroids issue has affected how we view the Hall of Fame. His opinion is that using players shouldn't be banned, but the steroid issue, which is complex, should be taken into consideration.

As a side note, the picture he uses is the one I mentioned in my last post showing Barry Bonds, of all players.

Value Priced Season Tickets (2)

In Part 1 I laid out the idea the Giants are using this year with regard to season ticket prices. I have attached the schedule according to ticket price. One of the problems this idea poses for my ticket partners and I is that we can't pick the number of games in advance with a set price in mind. Traditionally, we've picked the number of games we all wanted to see, then later had a draft. Either we need to do the draft earlier this year, or we need to adjust for ticket prices after we pick. Somehow or other, it should be worked out, although it will surely be more complicated.

Value Priced Season Tickets (1)

The Giants have initiated this year a value priced scheme for season tickets. They have been doing some of this with public sale for a few years now, but this is the first for season tickets. Value pricing is the idea that a weekend Dodger game (or Red Sox this year in interleague) should be a higher price than a mid-week Nationals game for the same seat, etc.

Traditionally, tickets have been priced the same for all games, based on seat location and level of amenity. Back when I first started attending Giants games at Candlestick regularly (1981), box seats were $6, reserved $5 and bleachers $1 (going up to $2 the following year). There were only three price categories. What I always thought strange, was that box seats in the upper deck in center field were the same price as box seats in the front row behind home plate. Most teams today have made many adjustments to seat prices, depending on location.

What the Giants have done is to create four categories of prices, but totalling up over the entire season, the total cost for season tickets remains the same. They are priced roughly 72%, 91%, 115% and 164% of last year's prices. There are more cheaper games than pricier games. This all makes sense from a marketing standpoint, because the Dodgers and Red Sox games will still sell out, while Nationals games (and other lesser draws) should gain higher attendance due to lower prices. And, those dreaded exhibition games the weekend before Opening Day are now far less!

There are three categories of comparables for which tickets vary in value: team played, weekday vs. weekend games, and mid-summer vs. spring and early fall. So, Rockies games in July will be more than Rockies games in April, etc., but Dodger games in April will be more than Rockies games in July. A Thursday night game of a four game series will be less than the Saturday and Sunday games.

I'm hoping this will allow us to sell our tickets in a better way, but there are other problems that have arisen. More on that in another post.
See Part 2