Home Is Where No Heart Is

The Mets opened a beautiful stadium this year that had no identity other than the name of a failing financial institution on its façade. Other than the retired numbers adorning the left field wall, nothing said “The Mets Live Here.”

Today, 114 games later, the team announced that championship banners and team photographs were being installed in the stadium. At the same time, with the team 11.5 games out of the division lead and 10 games behind for the wild card, ticket prices were reduced up to 50% for 13 of their remaining 26 home games.

The problem, however, is that it has taken the season to become virtually hopeless for the Wilpons to decide their losing team should display its home. Public relations and marketing may not be management’s strong suit, but it’s apparent that pandering is. Just when fans are throwing in their towels in disgust after witnessing 2 years of collapses and what might be described as indifference to the current roster, the first family of Queens baseball wants to give fans a reason to come to the ballpark. It’s almost as if they’re saying “Never mind the major league prices we’ve charged you to watch minor league ball for the past 2 months, come see the stadium and we’ll even throw in a ballgame.” For real fans a better tact might be to show real heart, real concern for a franchise that’s failed, come up with a plan to fix it and managers at all levels who are up to the task, and actually communicate it to the public. The direction they’re working with doesn’t stand any more of a chance moving forward as they have looking back. The injuries aren’t the problem, they’ve actually provided the microscope for analysis. Mets faithful need to hope it’s looked into with an enlightened eye, or this song will keep sounding like a broken record for many years to come.

On another note, the Mets won this afternoon in spite of Oliver Perez’s best efforts and numerous attempts to hand the game over to the Diamondbacks. His contract is making me think I really do need to be represented by Scott Boras. Until Ollie, I really thought the only people that regularly get paid well to regularly fail miserably were meteorologists.