Only Suckers Pay For Mariners Tickets

Constable Echelon

Red Sox. Tigers. Angels. Two to four tickets for every game of this homestand arrayed in front of me like playing cards with the following instruction: “Take your pick.”

Happens every year.

I nabbed two seats for last Tuesday’s Boston game, four seats for Wednesday’s Sawx show, and two for King Felix’s Latin American Baseball Day start against the Tigers last Saturday. The free duckets served as annual confirmation of Echelon’s Bombs Rule #1: Only suckers pay for Mariners tickets.

Corporate Seattle has the same revelation every January to boost employee morale, “Let’s get seasons for the Mariners! This is their year!”

Corporate Seattle has the same revelation every May, “We have way more tickets than we can use. It is decidedly not their year.”

When it comes to Bombs tickets, local companies exhibit about as much fiduciary discretion as Bill Bavasi faced with a past-his-prime “power” hitter’s agent at the winter meetings. Which is to say none. And I’m a little conflicted about this to tell the truth.

On the one hand it means that I get to attend the six to twelve Mariners games I can stomach every year for free. Great seats, too. On the other hand the reliable revenue stream provides zero incentive for management to care at all about winning. They’re making a profit regardless of how the team performs.

I don’t think it’s a coincidence either that the Mariners miraculously somehow flirt with respectability every mid-summer after having long since been knocked out of contention. In May the fan demographic changes from people who are attending the games because it’s a scene or a fun diversion, to people who care enough about the team to be upset at the gormless product on the field.

At the risk of some Simmons-esque ostentation, I think the players can sense this shift in the crowd. The Mariners won all three games I had seats to last week. For a team currently boasting a .356 winning percentage, that is the definition of a statistical improbability. It’s like they realize, “Uh-oh, these people have no reservations about booing the shit out of us. Time to stop fucking around.”

So will the Bombs remain in this morass as long as local businesses continually underwrite their incompetence? It’s likely. But look at the bright side: free seats!