and… FOUR HOME RUNS IN ONE INNING. I know, I know, it doesn’t count. I don’t care. It’s still FOUR HOME RUNS IN ONE INNING.
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and… FOUR HOME RUNS IN ONE INNING. I know, I know, it doesn’t count. I don’t care. It’s still FOUR HOME RUNS IN ONE INNING.
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Taken this morning at the Greenpoint Avenue G stop.
Again, provided that this is real, I very much like that there are FEMALE HUMANS in this ad. I like this ad because the focus is external, on the fans, and not on the organization. I like that the ads so far are focusing on the ‘believe’ theme. It’s aspirational without being arrogant or seeming ridiculous (an issue I have with the television ads). It almost makes you think that the organization cares about the fans.
I know a lot of people could care less about ads. But I worked in advertising long enough to have an opinion, have enough of a background in marketing that I like to think about these things - it’s interesting to *me*. And it’s better than yet another long-winded handwringing post about Jose Reyes (which will probably happen once the shock wears off).
I’m looking forward to hunting the rest of these down and putting my analysis to the test. If you run into one, I would love a good camera phone photo or a note letting me know where you saw it. English or Spanish, doesn’t matter.
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This beautiful, beautiful sight—which greeted me this morning on the Manhattan-bound side of the Vernon-Jackson 7 stop—is my idea of a definitive sign that winter is over and spring is right around the corner:
I will leave it to the native Spanish speakers to correct me on this, but I do believe the message is, essentially, “You gotta believe.”
I will need to see all of the creative before I can do a thorough assessment of its effectiveness (or lack thereof) but this example bodes well for the rest of the campaign.
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I know. It’s Spring Training. It’s one game (not even, yet).
I just have to be happy when I can about this team.
]]>As you know, every season, we like to add a few more ballparks to our growing list. I’ll never be able to do the once-in-a-lifetime “all ballparks in one season” trip, but I can add them a few at a time. The West Coast parks, especially San Francisco, have loomed large on my list of parks I have wanted to see. Last year, we had planned on going to California, but the itinerary was difficult and then we ended up having a family conflict. This year, however, we will not be denied. We have planned a 10-day roadtrip that encompasses every West Coast park (except Seattle, of course, since we’ve been already).
Right after the All Star break, we go out west for 10 days, hitting Anaheim, San Diego, San Francisco, Oakland, Phoenix and Los Angeles. We see the Mets six times, see the Mariners in Anaheim, see Phoenix in San Diego, see the Red Sox in Oakland. This trip doesn’t include Seattle because we’ve been there, and doesn’t include Colorado because it doesn’t fit.
We already have tickets for every game except San Diego (because it doesn’t matter - we’re going with friends) and one of the Dodgers games. We got lucky in the SF and Oakland onsales, and have been scouting the secondary market for the rest. We’re pretty happy with what we have. We already have hotel rooms (thank you, Starwood points) and the coast-to-coast plane tickets. (Still need to buy the inter-city plane tickets.) We don’t hit any great promotions with the exception of TIM LINCECUM BOBBLEHEAD DAY in San Francisco. (I swear we will be some of the first people in line for that item.) We are torn between whether Lou Seal or Stomper is the mascot we are the most eagerly looking forward to meeting. (I would kill to encounter the Crazy Crab, but know that’s just not possible.)
Needless to say, I’m pretty excited about this trip, and the planning of it has made the offseason far more tolerable in many ways. (In other ways, it just reinforces how much the Mets suck in terms of how they treat their fans, as you look at ticket prices and amenities and promotions and other similar pieces of information.) I plan on documenting every relevant moment in full, both photographically and in video.
This is a once-in-a-lifetime trip so we’ve been researching this within an inch of its life. The Google doc with the trip information in it already extends to several pages. Many generous baseball fans on the West Coast have been flooding us with information. But if you have hard-to-know information, insider information, the kind of information you only know because you’ve been there a gazillion times - share away. Anything we can find out by reading the team’s website - we got that stuff down. (We’re the kind of people who read the A-Z guides on every team’s website just because we think it’s fun.) I know LA pretty well, and we have friends in SD, SF and LA, so we’re good on touristy data.
The person who offers up the best or most useful piece of information which I did not already have in my possession will be compensated with a prize. I have a couple lying around here from last season. The scope of the usefulness will determine which prize. I already have expert parking tips for Los Angeles, so you’ll have to top that.
Or you can just tell me how much you hate me for going on such an excellent trip.
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This is a GREAT photo. I LOVE this photo. I love that they instead of the cliche spring training photo of some young boy in a Yankees jersey staring wide-eyed at Derek F. Jeter, it’s a girl in shock that she’s getting an autograph from Evan Longoria.
I LOVE the photo. I love that this girl is at Spring Training all decked out in her team’s regalia. (No, You don’t get to make fun of a 14 year old girl for being a Rays fan, if she lives down there, that’s what she’s got.) I agree that it is adorable.
I love everything about this article except for the headline:
“Looks like someone has a crush on Evan Longoria”
Really? Would you have said that if it had been a boy looking at the star of his team with any adoration? Why does she have to have a crush on him? Why can’t she just be thrilled to meet one of her team’s star players? Why does her fandom have to be diminished and demeaned by calling it ‘a crush’?
What about this boy or these kids? Their faces have the same quality of awe and wonder that our young female Rays fan does.
I know that the guys who wrote this meant to be positive, but thousands of guys are going to read that and it’s going to reinforce the “chicks only like sports so they can look at guys’ butts” stereotype. Thousands of girls are going to read that and grit their teeth and wonder when they can show up at the ballpark and be taken seriously. I saw the photo and went “awww” and then saw the headline and my heart literally sank.
I don’t want to pick on Yahoo! Sports because I find them to be clever and intelligent and thoughtful and don’t go for the easy win that would get them tons of comments (and their corresponding pageviews). And in the interests of full disclosure, they have linked to me several times, for which I am always grateful. I believe they meant well with this story, but I feel that they perhaps didn’t think this one all the way through. The headline trivializes the experience and dismisses the girl’s fandom. It’s disrespectful to all of us.
And now 50 guys will come over here and tell me that I am wrong. Yay!
[hat tip to Texy from Center Field for the other image links.]
]]>“Look at this!” he said.“There’s tickets in our section - IN THE ROW IN FRONT OF US!”
“Really? Are you sure?”
“Yes! Why did they not offer these to us!”
“It’s just one row…”
“But it’s still an upgrade.”
“True. Maybe I should call and see if they can move us up.”
So I called. I stopped what I was doing this morning and went and found an empty conference room and dialed the Mets. I waited on hold while the rep checked, I waited on hold again, and then he came back on and said that yes, he could move us, but we wouldn’t be able to have the commemorative plan holder booklet and special tickets. We already knew that was likely, and were okay with that if we could move up a row.
The rep starts clicking on the computer. I am getting excited. I know, it’s just a row, but it’s progress! It’s something!
“Oh,” he says. “I see. I can’t do this.”
“Why not?”
“Because it’s three seats, and the computer won’t let me split them.”
“What do you mean?”
“The computer will not let us split three tickets into two and one.”
“Why not?”
“That’s just how they work.”
“But there was a guy next to us last year who just owned one seat…”
“And if someone bought that seat, then I could sell you the two seats.”
“This is stupid. It is stupid that someone who walks up to the box office will sit in a better seat than a plan holder.”
“That’s just how it works. There’s nothing I can do. Everyone works that way, not just us.”
The last bit is what got me. Really? Everyone treats their plan ticket holders like this? Really? You’ll alienate the people who have been giving you money consistently because, gosh, the computer won’t let you break up three seats.
When I complained, he said, “We could move you to another section. We did open up three sections this year.”
“Where?”
“Caesar’s Club, left field…” and I didn’t hear the rest because IF SOMEONE IS BUYING SEATS IN THE PROMENADE THAT’S BECAUSE THAT’S WHAT THEY CAN AFFORD TO BUY and I started seeing black. “Oh, thanks Bob at the ticketing office, it never occurred to me that I could sit three levels down, I only bought the tickets up here in the stratosphere because I thought that was all there was!”
I hung up the phone and felt way more defeated than I probably should.
We thought about writing a letter and sending it overnight and trying to push it, but it won’t matter, because no one at the Mets gives a damn about our one 15 game plan, no one gives a damn that we bought one plan instead of two, no one there gives a damn about anyone except corporate suite holders and full season ticket holders - and even then barely. They want to sell the whole ballpark to full season ticket holders and let those people resell the tickets for them, on which, of course, the Mets get a cut, because MLB is in bed with Stubhub. Our friends in other cities all advise us to just find the $10k and buy a full season and surely with our network of connections, we’d be able to sell all the tickets, but frankly, I just refuse to do that. In this economy it would be unconscionable to over-extend like that. And with this team, there is zero guarantee that we would sell enough tickets to other people.
The Mets had better seats available than what we have and instead of upgrading the people who suffered through the last few years, dealing with the bullshit payment deadlines and the rest of it, they couldn’t be bothered.
None of this is new. None of this should be surprising. But it just still continues to completely confound how little they care about their fans. Maybe if the guy had been sympathetic, maybe if he had offered any kind of tone except the one he did offer. Maybe if he had offered a “thank you for supporting the team”.
Unfortunately, the choice is to stop seeing live baseball or keep being treated like this. They know we’ll be back, so they can keep doing it. The media writes about it, and they still don’t care. They don’t care because they don’t have to care.
Not caring is the one thing they do a fantastic job at, I’ll give them that.
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Disclaimer: the list below is meant to be a guide, a selection, not a definitive list. If you are not on it, I apologize. If your favorite person is not on there, well, tell us about them in the comments. Everyone has their own strategy, this is just what works for me. I work in social media so I’m more invested in this than yer average folks, and think about it more than most people ever do.
Disclaimer 2: DON’T HATE ME IF WE TALK ALL DAY AND I SOMEHOW FORGOT TO MENTION YOU
FOLLOW THE BEAT WRITERS
Almost all of the beat writers for every team are on Twitter, and almost all of them use the service and engage with their followers - they’ll answer questions, make jokes, and waste time during a 14 inning game with just regular folks. Some of them are better at it than others, and some of them have gotten markedly better as they get a sense of how this thing works. However, now that more people are on Twitter - or at least more than there were last year during the season - this may change the type and quality of the interaction, since if you’re dealing with a firehose of responses coming at you, it’s hard to give thoughtful responses.
If you follow more than one beat writer, you will have to deal with all of them tweeting the exact same information at just about the exact same time. I do it because I run the blog and I like the information - I even follow beat writers for other teams. Your mileage may vary, of course; my advice would be to follow them all, and then unfollow the ones that don’t interest you.
My recommendations are based on quality of content, willingness to engage, and quality of engagement.
[Yes. I know there are other beat writers covering the Mets. These are the ones I choose to follow. Also, waiting for Ben Shpiegel’s replacement to get on Twitter and use it, or not. Bart Hubbuch used to be behind @NYPost_Mets and he was super active, but now he’s moved on to the football beat. Right now that account only tweets links to stories. They might as well not bother.]
They’re not beat writers per se but you are dead wrong if you are not following
OTHER PROFESSIONALS:
You have your ESPN types, you have your MLBAM types, your Baseball Prospectus folks, etc. I recommend the following for funny or interesting or insightful folks that epitomize why Twitter is great:
There are others. Find your own!
Note: Yes. @sportsguy33 is on Twitter but there’s no point in following him. It’s like following Ashton Kutcher or Oprah. His feed is him being cranky, and a bunch of guys insulting him to try to get him to respond.
FOLLOW THE BLOGGERS
A lot of us blog folk got in on the Twitter act, and, like the beat writers, some of us are better at it than others. Some people just post links to their blog posts, others just talk to their friends, some will talk to everybody. I don’t follow anyone who uses their Twitter account to talk about everything - if I’m following you because you write a baseball blog, unless you’re a personal friend, I only care about what you have to say about baseball. I have unfollowed some people pretty fast when their feeds turned into diatribes against roommates, girlfriends or employers. My suggestion would be follow those bloggers that you like and pare down (or add) from there. Not everyone who’s a good blogger is good on Twitter. These are the people I think who are.
Some recommendations out of the many active blog-colleagues on Twitter:
[I trust I do not need to tell you to follow Matt Cerrone or MetsBlog. Personally, I read MetsBlog but follow Matt’s personal account.]
I also follow bloggers of other teams, with an unnatural prevalence of Cubs, Twins and Red Sox fans - probably because those teams have an unnatural quantity of blogs. I will spare you that list, because it’s intensely personal, but you can always go to my Twitter page and see who I follow if you’re interested.
Watching the playoffs on Twitter was like sitting in a sports bar with your friends - except it was people all over the country (and world). Maybe you’ll say “so why didn’t you just go to a sports bar” and I get that, but I like online community, and so do a lot of other people.
NOT BLOGGING, BUT…
Ah, the “fake” accounts. I think they’re terrible, with one exception: @FakeFredWilpon. It’s hard, really hard, to be funny on a consistent basis, and you have to work at it. I don’t know who it is (if it is anyone already active in the blogging scene) but they’re damn funny.
FOLLOW THE PLAYERS
There are MLB players on Twitter. MLB has these lame pages called “Connect” - for example, mets.com/connect - where you can find the ‘official’ MLB Twitter accounts. The beat writers for each team have been very good in running down rumored ‘official’ accounts and it’s generally known on Twitter before that page gets updated, but to their credit, they keep it up to date.
Most players, however, are not that engaging. There are exceptions, and then of course there are the stories about the people who are TOO engaging (Brian *cough* Wilson, aka (the now defunct)@BrianWilson38, who was very active, until he blew a save and then was tweeting about eating room service later that night and got called out on it by the media).
While there is a @CarlosBeltran15 official Twitter account, it mostly posts things about his charity work and doesn’t seem to be him (unlike, say, @hyphen18 (Ryan Rowland-Smith) or @thisisdspan (Denard Span) or @str8edgeracer (C.J. WIlson) or even - yes! - @TonyLaRussa. (More on Official Mets stuff below.)
JUST PLAIN FOLKS
Mets fans! We have a lot to say, and we have a lot to say on Twitter, too. The best way to find cool and interesting folks is to look who other people follow. If I find someone cool, the first thing I do (after following them) is look to see who they follow, and check out their Twitter pages. I do not wish to cause offense to any of the fine individuals I talk with every day, so I would prefer to not single anyone out. You get the idea. Find cool people. Talk to them. Lather, rinse, repeat.
WAIT, HAVEN’T YOU FORGOTTEN SOMETHING?
You want me to say “Follow the official Mets Twitter accounts?” Don’t bother. It’s just a feed pushing out URL’s to press releases. There ARE teams doing cool things with Twitter - the Yankees, for example, use Twitter to communicate about rain delays, the A’s use Twitter to communicate about ticket specials, and a few teams have their mascots on Twitter (Southpaw from the White Sox, @wally97 from the Red Sox, and @screechtheeagle from the Nationals). Seriously, the day the Mets hire a social media expert is the day the Mets institute $4 general admission tickets in the upper deck again. But it is cool to check out what other teams are doing, and if you’re crazy like me, it’s fun to hunt the stuff down. You can see examples of all of this by looking at who I follow on my Twitter page.
THINGS TO KNOW ABOUT TWITTER:
Finally: I know. Twitter is Stupid. [tm] You don’t care about what anyone ate for breakfast. If you hate social media and aren’t at all interested in it, I can’t convince you, and this article wasn’t written for you. But if you’re at all interested in it, hopefully this gave you a starting point.
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That rodent in Pennsylvania can go take a hike as far as I’m concerned. This is the TRUE sign of the end of winter.
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You all just got to camp and the media is lining up to get interviews and quotes and hand-held video and camera photographs. I know. I get it. I’m seeing it.
Here’s what I want to hear from you, since you have to say the same thing about 50000 times: I want to hear that you’re working hard. I want to hear that you are confident. I want to hear that you know that last year was unacceptable. I want to hear that you worked hard in the offseason and came into camp in shape and ready to go. I want to hear that you are optimistic about the season. I want to hear that you’re looking forward to the season. I want to hear that you are confident in your abilities. Hell, you can even say you’re confident in your teammates’ abilities, even if you’re not quite on board 100% with that. You gotta share a clubhouse with these guys.
Your attitude should be calm and confident. Cocky is not going to cut it. Cocky makes you look stupid. I don’t want to hear that “We expect to win the National League East”. “We expect to dramatically exceed our performance last year and make our fans proud of us” would do just fine.
“We’re expecting to go out there and win the National League East, go deep in the playoffs and win a World Series.”
David. Cocky makes us yell things at the computer or television screen, because we heard you say all those things for the last couple of years.
I’m not saying you have to hang your head or wear a dunce cap or answer every question with, “Yeah, I know, we suck!” But please.
That said, I COULD NOT BE MORE EXCITED THAT PITCHERS AND CATCHERS REPORT TOMORROW. Why are there no cards for this auspicious occasion? Why are there no sterling silver Tiffany earrings in the shape of little baseballs? THERE WOULD BE A MARKET FOR THESE.
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Matt Cerrone’s question over at MetsBlog (that he’s hearing that the Mets are “thinking” about having character races - so either they’re talking about and someone told him, or they told him so they could see what fan response would be) has me banging my head into the wall. This franchise keeps ignoring obvious ways to make the fans content and instead flails about seizing irrelevant, ridiculous ideas like character races. This is right up there with the “Sweet Caroline” debacle. You can argue it until you’re blue in the face, but that song has a strong association with Boston and continuing to play it at Citi Field, especially when it was met with constant loud booing that they could hear all the way in the press box, was just bullheaded. A source told me that the reason they doggedly insisted on playing it was because it was one of Jeff Wilpon’s favorite songs. (We also have him to blame for foisting Coldplay upon us).
The Mets keep making bumbling move after bumbling move, and the concept of a character race is just the latest in this reign of incompetence. Don’t get me wrong here - I love me some anthropomorphic characters. I tweet with @southpaw on a regular basis. I own a complete set of sausage dolls, not to mention a stuffed version of every mascot from almost every ballpark I’ve been to (and some I haven’t made it to yet!) The sausages make sense in Milwaukee. The presidents make perverse sense in DC, a new team trying to create new traditions. And while the sausage race is sponsored (they’re Klement sausages after all), I’ve been there. It’s not heavy-handed. It’s not the colossally moronic construction equipment race to Citi Field sponsored by Arpielle, aka “The Ugliest Sponsorship Billboard in the Most Prominent Placement In Any MLB Ballpark”. The Arpielle situation clearly demonstrates that THEY DO NOT KNOW HOW TO DO THIS. (And feel free to define “this” as anything you like.)
Although I do like the Kranepool Society’s idea of the Rat Race.
We are doing a big West Coast roadtrip this year that is going to hit all the parks except Seattle (a place we have been and will return to in future), so we’re doing a lot of research in preparation. this article about the changes in the in-game entertainment at Padres games was particularly interesting, and is something that the Mets could learn from - if they could be bothered to. They analyze, they listen, they try things.
That’s just the thing. All the Mets would have to do is what I do every day, which is sit online and read what all the other teams in MLB are doing. The Astros were doing a Valentine’s Day special with an evening ballpark tour and a photo on the field. Every team except the Yankees did some kind of fan fest or winter carnival. Almost every team made a big deal (in some cases, like Boston, maybe too much of a big deal) about Truck Day. There is no way on earth that I believe that people in the organization aren’t aware of what other teams are doing. Please do not bring up the Yankees as an example because they’re not - and even the Yankees offer tours of the goddamn ballpark. I realize that we are in New York and everyone else lives in a small hamlet unworthy of attention from the outside world. If you saw what they did in Los Angeles or San Francisco you would have to eat your words. Boston, who doesn’t have to do anything to attract fans, still tries hard to make the experience pleasant for fans. And Chicago just doesn’t have any of that nonsense at all, which, frankly, I enjoyed tremendously.
The Mets simply cannot be bothered to do anything. It’s why we don’t have Old Timer’s Day, it’s probably why we don’t have Banner Day. They do the minimum and then pull out ridiculous things like painting the stairwells blue and orange and consider having a freaking character race. They brought the Home Run Apple over but made the most artificial, character-less apple possible. People are not coming to the ballpark to watch the Presidents or the Sausages or the Pierogies run. We have Mr. Met - how about you do more with the mascot we already have and like?
We don’t need the Mets to do anything else. We need the team to win, or at least play baseball at a level that is tolerable to watch. If the team is winning, no one will care about the ugly scoreboard advertisements. If the team is losing, nothing you do is going to make the fans happy. We want fair prices, we want a winning team, we want simple things like access to the field for BP and reasonable service charges on tickets, fairly priced concessions, security that makes us feel like welcome guests and not interlopers. Start with the basics before having a subway race across the field between innings.
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I am not posting this as approval for this deal. But it was an excuse for me to drag out a photo of Mike Jacobs from last year (when I went down to Baltimore just so I could watch Zack Greinke pitch) and a reason to update the blog two days in a row.
ENJOY THE SNOW
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It’s so exciting, isn’t it? I just LOVE truck day. I love the live video feed on mets.com of Mr. Met helping pack the truck. I love watching the photo ops of the players who haven’t left yet, pretending to help pack the truck. It’s awesome that they let the kids from Harlem RBI and the Girls & Boys Club come and help pack the truck too, it’s a great event for them. I appreciate that WFAN is broadcasting live from Citi Field and that there’s a discount at the team store and free coffee from Dunkin’ Donuts for any fans who want to stop by and watch. I think the giveaways of those promotional Opening Day t-shirts is a fantastic thing. So many teams make a great, fun event around Truck Day, I’m so glad the Mets are one of them. It really breaks up the monotony of the winter and gets people thinking about baseball.
Of course, none of the above is true (before you go running out to Willets Point). I made it all up on the spot without thinking about it too much. I’m not claiming any originality, I’m just mimicking what I see other teams all over MLB do on Truck Day.
The point is, if I can do this without thinking, and without being any kind of sports marketing professional, why don’t the Mets? It’s a missed opportunity of putting something positive out there. It’s missed opportunity to create fan and community goodwill.
It is, of course, business as usual.
What did we get? A blurry photo of Mr. Met falling out of a Uhaul posted to MetsBlog.
But I’m still excited, and now I’m regretting that I don’t have a Spring Training trip planned. Baseball! It’s almost back again!
]]>FINALLY IT IS TIME FOR BASEBALL.
And not a moment too soon.
I know. It’s still going to be a tough year. But it’s still going to be baseball. Baseball!
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I just want the season to start.
On a positive note, we bought our first set of tickets (BOS @ OAK) for our monster West Coast roadtrip. Giants on-sale later this week (and we’ll be there for Tim Lincecum bobblehead day, which delights us to no end).
Really. I’ll be there with bells on once the season starts. Right now, it’s just waiting and bitching.
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