Tuesday, October 13, 2009
WE DESERVED ONE OF THESE.
The Minnesota Twins took out this ad in the local papers (and made it available on their web site).
Sure, they’re promoting Target Field. But there’s no “call to get your tickets now” or “you can be here too, here’s the phone number”.
It’s just a thank you. Thank you for being fans. Thank you for being there. We are grateful for your support, and we are sorry that we let you down. (And the photo of Carlos Gomez in mid-air made me a little misty.)
Maybe the Mets have done this in the past (have they?), but we’re owed at least three since when I came on board. And don’t point out the hastily cobbled-together “We’re sorry” video footage at the games, not everyone was at the games, and they didn’t show them on TV.
Don’t give me “small market team”. This is just manners. This is just common sense. This is just classy. This is the right way to run an organization.
Are you listening, Dave Howard and Jeff Wilpon? Or is this something that you’ll “get to” eventually?
Posted by Caryn at 12:06 PM
well said. i don’t remember one of these in recent memory. i do miss fan appreciation day. i did see on the scoreboard at the final game “3.15+ million thanks” or something like that for the over 3.15 million fans who came out, but maybe only the couple thousand who were there on the final day saw it. the Mets owe us more “thank yous” than the Twins do right now, but clearly they get it (in many ways that the Mets don’t).
It is the right way to run an organization. Unfortunately, what Dave Howard and Jeff Wilpon oversee is a disorganization.
The team filmed an apology video for the season. I remember not to long ago (when they were there for team pictures) they filmed it. Also, they reduced ticket prices, and Jeff Wilpon sent out another apology and thank you video (flushing Flash email).
Really? they reduced ticket prices for 2009? I didn’t get a credit to my account. Maybe I should call them.
I guess I just don’t feel thanked. I don’t think that I needed to be there the last weekend of the year to see the special videos. I didn’t know about the emails or the videos in the emails (somehow the Mets historically have problems sending me email) but I did hear the ownership on WFAN and that attitude didn’t make me feel valued. You can’t say “we’ll get to it” when we ask about the Mets Hall of Fame or the WS trophies in one breath and then send out a video that says “we’re sorry” and expect people to take you at your word.
I know I’m not a real fan and I haven’t been around long enough to even deserve to wear a Mets t-shirt, but I do know that this attitude on the part of management is not a new thing. So maybe if I see evidence that they really do give a crap about the fans over the next off-season and season, I’ll be willing to believe them next year when we lose again and they film a bunch of nice videos that say “I’m sorry.”
And all of that aside, I think the ad is classy. It’s saying thank you IN PUBLIC to everyone. Not just hidden in the ballpark if you happened to be there early enough to see it.
I just feel that fans deserve better. Maybe I’m just stupid to think we should insist on more than we should get.
The Twins have always been the classiest organization in baseball, possibly in all of sports. Heck, they had the grounds crew out before game 163 to thank them for the job they did in converting the field from football to baseball so quickly.
I’ve been a Mets fan since the 80’s. Would I like to be thanked for showing up at games when we were, literally, the worst team money could buy in the early to mid 90’s? Yeah, but the greatest thank you they ever gave us was trading for Mike Piazza. I’d love for them to show us they care like THAT again.
C:
Not sure if I ever mentioned this to you guys admist my baseball stories but in the mid 90’s when I was doing my 3-4 week baseball stadium trips I would write to all the teams explaining my purpose of these trips and ask for comp tickets.
Many teams obliged to this request. Some didn’t and only very few didn’t even acknowledge my letter.
To my utter suprise (and to the post office) teams sent me a ton of swag. From yearbooks to media guides to pennants and magnets, etc.
The team that sent me the most? Yup, the Twins.
They also gave me tickets behind home plate. Which I sat next to Herb Carneal’s wife. Which was a history lesson in Twins baseball, a testmant in a decades worth of love between Herb and “Kat” and an afternoon I shall never forget.
It’s just the Mets, I am convinced (maybe the Yankees too, but I haven’t bought tickets from them recently). I was up for a pre-sale of Angels and Dodgers tickets for the playoffs and the Padres thanked me for coming out to their stadium. Not to mention the Nationals sent me a personal email for buying a block of like 16 tickets, offering me a group discount in the future if I choose to bring that many people to the park again. Wow. The mets? Oh, we’ll give you 10% because of economic conditions. Not, you know, because the team sucks. DyHRDMet said it best - Fan Appreciation Day was the best and it should be brought back.
PS We’re going to Target Field next year. I’m looking at their schedule to see when the Angels will be around, since I know the Mets won’t be in 2010 :)
It’s that Minnesota Nice thing, don’t ya know ....
Mets have better things to spend their money on than a thank you. If they really want to thank the fans, save the meaningless apologies and spend the money on actually improving the on field product. We’ve heard enough lip service from upper management in the last week. Thanks, but no thanks.
The ad is a classy gesture on the part of the Twins.
I’d like to see more gestures like this (and a real Fan Appreciation Day) from the Mets, but the best way to thank the fans for supporting the team is field a team that hustles and plays smart baseball every day.
Coop- The Angels are in Minnesota the weekend of Mets in Pitt!!! Go to Pittttttttttttt!
Oh, and I had success on the peppers :-)
Hey, guess what? Signing Jason Bay or Grady Sizemore and taking out a full page in the Times are not mutually exclusive. Give me a fucking break.
Why fans are so ready to put up with being treated like crap is just beyond me. Why it’s considered disloyal to demand better is incomprehensible.
Some ownerships just ‘get it’, a bit like the current Red Sox group, and do stuff like that naturally.
While I appreciate your lovefest Caryn, last I checked the Wilpons didn’t collude and conspire to dissolve the team for a big hunk of cash with Adolf Selig; after failing to strong arm the people of Minn and threatening to sell the team to an owner that would move them to NC.
Give me a break. No one questions whether you or any of us should be disappointed or critical of the Mets; we should. But spare us the supposed mid western nicer BS that the Twins are classier or better run organization because we’re hitting bumps in the road (and yes bumps like this last longer than a few months). They went through 8 losing seasons after winning the WS in 1991 you’re tapping out after what, one?
I definitely don’t like the Wilpons but Pohlad was your typical smarmy billionaire owner (like ours) and was far from the best or even better than the Wilpons. And I’m sorry, the contraction crap him and his buddy Selig pulled will to me go down in baseball as the single most snakey, slimy cruddy thing ever attempted in modern history. But hey they got their stadium right? After choking the people of Minnesota for years with the worst stadium in baseball until they relented. So classy. Plus they signed the pretty local boy to keep everyone’s mind of not keeping Santana or wanting to pay their franchise guys; I guess Tori Hunter is greedy too? Classic misdirection. Wonder how better they would have been with those two guys and beefy payroll of a 100 million or so it would have taken.
Strange definition of class to me.
I’d take the Wilpons over him; or whomever is running it since he kicked the bucket earlier this year, or my other favorite scumbag of an owner, Jeff Loria, any day and twice on Sunday.
Neat poster though.
The Mets ownership needs to hire someone with better PR skills to put a better face on the organization. Caryn is correct that this is something that should be relatively inexpensive and will go a long way with the average fan. Until Dave’s posting, I had forgotten about Carl Pohlad and his “interesting” history with the Twins - some of which I can still remember from when I lived in Minneapolis. He was never very popular, but the fans loved the team. Maybe there’s a perfect organization out there somewhere… :-)
Hey Dave, you forgot to add that I’m still too angry & your usual complaint about the ads on my site.
I’ve asked some actual Twins fans to stop by.
Well Dave raises an interesting question, how do Minnesota Twins fans feel about Pohlad? Not much really. The time of the contraction talk I was in graduate school in NYC. I missed the anguish of it all. I was in school with a guy who was from the bay area and his beloved Oakland A’s were also on the chopping block. He and I would spend hours talking about the difference between ownership/business and the team/the guys who love baseball.
That was the only point in time that I remember having long conversations about ownership. Yet it was always a conversation that separated out the business and the team. Naive of me I know. I love the twins I love the fact that as a season ticket owner I get phone calls from the team, (robocalls) and that they let me know what is going on. I think of twin’s management I think of Dave St. Peters/Bill Smith not of the Pohlad family.
So call me a simple Midwestern type but I do not understand why anyone would not see an ad taken out thanking us for our support is a bad thing.
I am critical of our small market and I would have loved to compete with the nasty Yankees and we did to a degree a blown close, a bad call and two mistakes on the base paths could have made a huge difference. (well and leaving two baseball teams worth of guys on base)
The truth is living in NYC for three years never dampened my love of the Twins. The way that “fans” of the NYC teams treat the players just rubs me the wrong way. I went to Yankees, Mets, Jets, Islanders, Rangers, NJ Devils game when I was out east and I could not believe what the fans would say, yell and boo.
Is it all to simple just to love your team? To appreciate being thanked, with out questioning the motives of the ownership and their thank you and needing to dredging up stuff from 2001?
Okay that is my piece hope you all have a good off season and the Mets are a better healthier team in 2010. Feel free to come on out to visit Target Field in the next year.
Yes, the contraction business sucked. And if you read a lot of Twins blogs or commentary after Carl Pohlad passed away, you’d have seen that there’s still not much love lost for the man.
But the Twins organization’s relationship with the fans is separate from that. In fact, during the contraction talk, I think the bond between the team and the fans that showed up night after night grew stronger. “Screw Pohlad, let’s play baseball.”
Maybe the Pohlad clan doesn’t care about fans. Their money pays the salaries of a lot of people who do. That’s good enough for me. If I rolled my eyes every time the Twins have done something nice for me, as a fan, just because Carl Pohlad and Bud Selig were/are asshats, my eyeballs would have gotten stuck in the back of my head a long time ago. The team does do a lot of little things that are appreciated. And little things count too.
And no, we can’t afford to keep all of the talent we develop into franchise players. We have tight-fisted ownership in a small-market city. It’s an unfortunate reality. But it’s fun watching players develop into great talents over the years anyway. And when they’re gone, there are new young faces ready to step in. It’s not perfect, but no system is. Riding aging players with gigantic contracts into the ground isn’t the most successful strategy either.
I love Dave’s suggestion that the Twins drafted Joe Mauer over Mark Prior in 2001 (a move a lot of folks scoffed at), as an elaborate plan concocted because six years later they knew he would be a superstar and they would lose Torii Hunter and Johan Santana. (Perhaps I should get whoever had those premonitions to pick some lotto numbers for me!) Please. The Twins took a gamble on Mauer the same way any team takes a gamble with the #1 draft pick. It paid off. DIABOLICAL!
Unless, of course, Dave wasn’t referring to Mauer when he said “pretty local boy?” Maybe he meant Pat Neshek? Or Glen Perkins? See…the Twins tend to draft a lot of local boys. Shame on them for trying to keep a local connection and make dreams come true for kids who grew up watching the team. Those scheming bastards.
I’m going to point out the comments policy:
“Constructive criticism is by all means welcomed, but if all you’re doing is coming here to rip apart everything I do, I kind of need to ask why you’re bothering, and wonder about your real motivation.”
If you don’t like my site, don’t like what I write, etc., then please go elsewhere. Personally insulting me just makes you look bad, not the other way around.
I made my points and think them valid. After cooling off and rereading them I can see how I wrote it may be taken negatively or as an attack.
But like I explained in my comment you deleted I don’t mind when people take the Mets to task, I just get worked up when it’s done in juxtaposition because frankly all the teams have had their shares of bonehead trades, seasons, signings, gaffes (Twins baserunnig), etc.
I apologize if the way I worded them was taken as a direct attack on you or the Twins. I actually like them a lot and have for many years which is why I followed many of their goings on. I used to work for a company headquartered in MN and at our annual meetings or whatever reason I’d have to go there throughout the years, if they were in town while we were there, they’d take us to the games. They’re actually the only team besides the Mets I’ve ever really went to more than a few games.
I do think they deserve to have their beloved Johan and Tori playing there still. I saw them play there and saw how much the fans loved those two and from interviews how much they in turn loved playing there. I do think they deserve better and I do think many small market teams hide behind statements of not being able to afford payroll and yet their financials are hidden from scrutiny because it’s easy to point at the NY teams and scream imbalance. No one knows how much of the money made goes back into the team etc. So my comments aren’t from and angle of salting wounds but from commiserating with them.
Do however see that they didn’t read that way. So I am here to apologize for that. I’m quitting all baseball stuff until February I’ve decided. I’m way too worked up and frustrated and such from this whole debacle of a season. I’ve never really experienced anything like this year as long as I’ve been watching them (since 1984). I actually agree with most you say but realize I probably only comment when making a counterpoint so I can see how you perceive me.
Perhaps 2010 will be better. Until then…
In October 1992, after a 72-90 5th place finish, almost exactly like this year, the Mets put the following ad in the New York newspapers. They could repeat it word-for-word this year.
Dear Met Fans:
Our season wasn’t exactly one to remember. We were just as disappointed as we know you were. But what we won’t soon forget is all of you who came out to Shea., despite our many injuries,despite the economy,despite even the bad weather.
They say when your down and out you find out who your true friends are. We were happy to discover we still had true fiends, by the millions.
So thank you Mets Fans and thank you New York.
Spring training is only for months away. We can hardly wait.
Lets Go Mets
The New york Mets.
Signed by all the Mets players.
This was a great gesture, however in 1993 they finished 59-103.
well said. i don’t remember one of these in recent memory. i do miss fan appreciation day. i did see on the scoreboard at the final game “3.15+ million thanks” or something like that for the over 3.15 million fans who came out, but maybe only the couple thousand who were there on the final day saw it. the Mets owe us more “thank yous” than the Twins do right now, but clearly they get it (in many ways that the Mets don’t).