Selling Perfect Game Tickets After the Fact: Stop the Madness!

Hey, fans. Want to pretend to your friends that you got to see Philadelphia Phillies pitcher Roy Halladay’s perfect game in person, when the most you really witnessed was the view from your recliner? Well, the Florida Marlins franchise – the team Halladay beat Saturday – is going to make it a lot easier for you to play make-believe.

Only 25,000 people actually attended that game, but fear not. You can now buy your own ticket to Halladay’s perfect game after the fact – and pay the same very ticket prices that those who were actually at the game did. Of course, you didn’t actually get to witness the perfecto in person, but thanks to this sweet deal, you can pretend to your friends that you were there. Oh, great. Wonder if these tix will count towards the Marlins’ overall attendance figures.

At the risk of sounding like a baseball crank griping about the good old days and telling kids to get off my lawn, I absolutely hate what the Marlins are doing. It cheapens the meaning of ticket stubs. It’s ripping off fans. And it’s just plain tacky.

Yes, I know the Marlins are not the first team to pull this stunt to commemorate a perfect game. After all, the Chicago White Sox also sold unused tickets last year to commemorate Mark Buehrle’s perfect game, and the Oakland Athletics gave away “a commemorative ticket dated May 9, 2010″ to 10,000 fans in honor of Dallas Braden’s perfecto.

But no matter who started this trend, enough is enough. For teams to be pushing these unsold tickets – and selling them at full price -  cheapens the monetary value of any fan’s ticket who actually attended the games. It also enables blowhard fans to pass themselves off as having really witnessed history.

How many times have you heard somebody claim to have attended some big event, when you know they weren’t within 200 miles of it? It’s like Woodstock – if all the people who claimed they were there actually showed up, the event would have filled New York State with hippies!

At least with ballgames, you always had the ticket stub proof to show that you actually were at a big event. Until now, when baseball teams have cheapened the value of such tangible evidence.

Another thing that’s obnoxious about what Florida is doing is that their team was the one on the losing side of history in that game. What message does it send to their actual fans, with the team’s ownership is trying to make money on a game that the Marlins lost?

What happens if the Marlins actually do sell all these extra tickets? Do they print up more, just to make some more money? And what’s to stop some fan who attended one of these perfect games with one of the computer printout versions of their game tickets from selling copies of that ticket on eBay?  After all, they’re about as legitimate as the faux ducats the teams are selling!

Photo by BaseballBacks