Friday, April 22, 2005

THINGS I DON'T GET

Here's a thought about the Sheffield thing that I read about at a blog called The GYS Network. How come the fan who may or may not have struck Gary Sheffield got season tickets revoked, yet the fan who actually altered the course of a very famous game a few years ago was rewarded with season tickets?

What House did at Fenway was wrong and he should have been ejected from the game and possibly had his season ticket holder status put on probation, but this kid should never have gotten rewarded for blatantly breaking the rules. Had it been an Orioles fan at Camden Yards, the call would have been fan interferance and the kid would have gotten alot more criticism and much less praise.

Here's another thing I don't get. How come among Red Sox fans, there seems to be a backlash towards Pedro Martinez yet there is little backlash against Nomar Garciaparra? Nomar was a solid player for us but he missed more time than Pedro, failed in the clutch in September and October of 2003, and when we traded him, we suddenly began to win and won the World Series!

BTW, Pedro had another quality start going 7 innings and allowing only 1 ER in a Mets win. He struck out 8.

One more thing that completely baffles me. How come the Yankees are willing to build a new ballpark and we aren't? The Red Sox have won 5 World Series since moving to Fenway. The Yankees have won 25 World Series since they moved into Yankee Stadium. There's obviously more history in the Bronx than in the Fens. The Yankees already have a big stadium capacity wise. They have sufficient infrastructure and a decent location with plenty of parking. They seem to have everything Fenway doesn't yet Steinbrenner still wants to pay almost $1 billion for a new ballpark. Why? Cuz he's a smart businessman. He knows the profit potential of a new Yankee Stadium with a few thousand more seats and a few dozen luxury boxes. That's why the Yankees are the Yankees. They're greedy. They always want to improve themselves. Especially with the luxury tax, the cost of baseball is going up for them and they are going to put themselves in a position to maintain their spending. Meanwhile, the Red Sox are more concerned with nostalgia and "history" than actualy running a baseball team as a business. Why the hell do they care if people will miss Fenway? People will still go to the games and spend money on the team!!! That's all that matters!!! If anyone thinks people go to Fenway for the ballpark, they obviously weren't a fan back in 1997 say and went to April games to see some crappy team in crappy weather. NO-ONE WAS THERE!!! People don't go to Fenway to see the Green Monster or sit in uncomfortable seats, they go to Fenway to watch a great baseball team play a great game. The Red Sox are the attraction, Fenway is just a venue. The Red Sox have the potential to make alot of money and subsequently spend alot of money on this team and they are refusing to do it. Adding 100 $250 seats doesn't do much. It's $2 million at the end of the year which in the grand scheme of things represents a small amount of money. It increases the Red Sox revenues by about one percent. Then you have to figure in construction costs and crap like that. If the Sox built a new ballpark, they could sell about 17,000 more tickets a game at about an average cost of $25. That's $34.4 million a season right there. THAT is a significant increase in revenue. Not to mention the luxury box sales and additional ad space the team could sell.

It is ironic that the Red Sox are going to hold onto Fenway because of nostalgia. They didn't listen to nostalgia when they traded Nomar. They listened to their minds, not their hearts. And it worked out, BIG TIME.

000 000 000 000 000 000


That's what David Wells, Blaine Neal, Matt Clement and Keith Foulke combined to do to one of the fiercest looking lineups in baseball the past two days. 1-0 games are always refreshing compared to the 7-5 slugfests seen on a nightly basis.

The Man of the Game is undoubtedly Matt Clement. 8 innings pitched, 0 ER, 8 hits scattered, 1 walk and 7 Ks. He worked out of some jams and considering that he had to face the likes of Brian Roberts, Sammy Sosa, Miguel Tejada and Melvin Mora a few times only makes his outing more impressive.

The Sox fly down to Fenway Park South a.k.a. Tropicana Field to play the D-Rays.

The Celtics will be playing the Indiana Pacers in the 1st round of the NBA playoffs. They play game 1 in Boston Saturday night. Hopefully, I'll be there.

I just finished a 9 page term paper on why New York surpassed Boston as a city. I felt somewhat dirty doing it but in the opening paragraph I snuck in:

"About the only things Boston has better than New York are colleges and sports teams."