Are Mets On The Verge Of A Huge Mistake With Reprinted Tickets?

Well now they've gone and done it. The Mets front office has gone and made me leave my parody perch and write something real. I don't like doing that but here we go. As many of you have heard by now the Mets are planning to cash in on the first no-hitter in franchise history by selling reprinted tickets from the historic night.

I'm going to try to stick to the facts here so lets start with the press release the Mets sent out. Feel free to look over the entire thing but the line that most has fans on edge is this one:

The Mets will reprint all 41,922 seats at Citi Field. There is a limit of four seats per order. Fans can select a seating category and receive the best available seat in that location.

Upon reading this, my first thought was. Wait, the Mets are going to sell somebody tickets with my seat number on them to some random person who wasn't even there?  So I went on twitter and reached out to Mets VP of Ticket Sales Leigh Castergine.  Here's what she said:

ReadTheApple @LeighJC_NYM Wait, so are the #Mets going to sell someone a reprint of my seats from the No-Hitter? 6/7/12 4:24 PM

LeighJC_NYM @ReadTheApple we will not sell any tickets that were owned by sth, plan, or pack holder from the no-hitter6/7/12 4:26 PM

In my past interactions with Ms. Castergine she has been nothing but honest and professional with me so I have no reason not to take her at her word. This put me at ease knowing my tickets would not be reprinted but then I started thinking. What about people who bought walk up tickets or ordered them individually from Mets.com.  They witnessed history the same as I did and now someone else can walk around with their seat numbers on a ticket stub?  It doesn't make sense.

The attendance for the game was 27,069. Citi Field holds 41,922. I did the math and that means there were 563 unused tickets.  Then I had someone better at math do the math and they correctly pointed out that it was actually 14,853 unused seats.  Why can't the Mets just sell those stubs?

Which brings up another thought. The great thing about being the Mets is that they are allowed to slap the name Mets on anything and sell it for a premium. So why not just make a special commemorative ticket and sell that.  You could put either a bogus or vacant seat location on it.  It would be no more a "real" ticket than a reprinted ticket.

What if you had those horrible e-tickets to the game? The Mets email is unclear as to whether your 50 bucks gets you the ticket for the actual seat you had or if you just get "best available seat in that location."  For that, why wouldn't I just go here and get a fully framed one with my correct seat for less than $50?  Seems like a better deal than what the Mets are offering doesn't it?

Before I start getting hate mail, let me just say this.

I get it.

The Mets are in the business of making money and with Nohan stubs breaking records online it would be foolish to completely ignore the secondary market. If someone wants to pay for what is essentially a fake ticket, charge them whatever you want. Just don't sell someone an exact copy of mine or anyone else's seat. I don't even care that this will destroy or at the very least muddle the memorabilia market for authentic stubs. All I ask is that the Mets, who have been doing such a good job of listening to the fans lately, listen to us once again and rethink this move before they make an embarrassing mistake.

At multiple times during his magical no-hit performance, Johan Santana was faced with critical decisions. On that night he made all the right choices and made history. Let's hope the Mets front office takes a cue from their ace and really thinks about what they are about to do.

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