San Jose: Worth The Price Of Admission

Who in Major League Baseball is worth the price of admission?

Of all the inescapable talk radio banter out there, and because the stars are marketed more than the teams, this is the only legitimate question. All the other debates like Hall of Fame, Best Ever, and Trade Talks do not impact ME. The price of a ticket does.

This question is also worth asking on the same day the AP released the results of a poll* in which 63% of respondents said that baseball’s biggest problem was the high cost of attending games, despite that 1/3 of all major league teams have lowered or held prices steady for this season.

The only individual players that I believe are worth of the price of admission today are Albert Pujols and Tim Lincecum. That is why when the man behind the register at the San Jose Giants souvenir shack told me that one of the reasons why attendance was down (half the 3,000+ average) for the Thursday night tilt against the first place High Desert Mavs was because Lincecum was pitching for the big club, it made perfect sense.

San Jose as a baseball town has been getting a lot of publicity where I live lately. First, there have been at least six players on the team’s roster this season that may make the big club within two years. Second, San Francisco Baseball Associates, L.P. has been flexing its territorial muscles on the town as it prevents the A’s from trying to build a stadium there. Ah, the business of baseball. As a team, The San Jose Giants have been playing well this year. Winners of the first half of the California League season in their division and a 11-3 start in the second half is not too shabby for a team at any level.

Winning has translated into strong attendance and strong souvenir sales so far. All this despite that Silicon Valley has not been immune to the economy’s ills over the past nine months. Unemployment is on pace with the state – higher than the national average both ~11% – and some sectors have been hit harder than others. On this night, only 1,538 paid for tickets, but it seemed like fewer than that showed up. Many reasons were given for the drop. Lincecum on TV. 20,400 for the previous five games around the holiday. No promotion. Cooler weather. Final game of a homestand. All were given as reasons.

One fan who did show up was John from nearby Fremont. He has been coming to five or so Giants games per season for the last 8 years. I caught John for a couple of innings while his wife and daughter left their seats on the top row of the sparsely inhabited bleachers down the left field line. John was kind enough to oblige.

He told me that he purchased a total of 14 tickets – enough for his family of three to attend 4 games together with two to spare – for the same price it would have cost them to attend one A’s game from where I sat for the Tigers game.

John certainly feels he is priced out of major league games. A one-income family for now means value (there’s that word again) comes first when it comes to entertainment as evidenced by his family’s patronage to other intimate events such as the sprint racing at the San Jose Fairgrounds Speedway or in Watsonville. He feels much more connected to the San Jose Giants than he does to the Oakland A’s. He saw Pablo Sandoval AND Lincecum pitch here last year. I think if you ask him point blank, he’d say he underpaid to see them as members of the San Jose Giants.

There is another reason for John’s disconnection. When the NHL canceled its 2004-05 season because of a strike/lockout, he knew of two businesses in San Jose that went under shortly after that stoppage because the fans were not filling restaurants and bars before and after Sharks games. “Millionaires fighting with billionaires,” he said. It just doesn’t add up.

John can tell which houses in and around his neighborhood are in foreclosure. While it gets him down, part of him does get encouraged when he sees things like record donations at local food drives in some of San Jose’s and Fremont’s neighboring affluent zip codes.

This was my first San Jose Giants game in 12 years, but it felt like 12 days. San Jose Municipal Stadium looks exactly the same as it did in ‘97, but it is an anachronism. Amidst the world’s largest companies and the smartest workers in California’s 3rd largest city sits a stadium with hand-painted signs, high-school-esque metal bleachers down the foul lines, and a bbq pit and beer garden that make one wonder why they even have regular concession stands.

John wonders why this team does not have a state-of-the-art facility of its own. The S.F. Giants protect the area like it is Fort Knox, and the community has been coming out for this incarnation of baseball for over three decades.

It may be that the stadium was built as a WPA project in the 40’s. If we have to resort to a nationwide program like that again, maybe they will.

In other news – Pitchers threw strikes and hitters swung the bat in the Giants’ 3-1, two-hour and 14-minute victory over the High Desert Mavericks, an affiliate of the Mariners. The pitching performances of Clayton Tanner (W,7-3) and Dan Runtzler (1IP, 2K) cannot go unnoticed. The game’s highlights, however, were provided by Mav RF Joe Dunigan, who struck out in his first three AB’s. Beer drinkers rejoiced. As the Beer Batter of the game, each Dunigan strike out meant a discount on a cold one.

Joe Dunigan (#20) prepares to lower the gross margin for the San Jose Giants' nightly take in a game on July 9, 2009 by swinging and missing often.

* See all the results of the AP/KnowledgeNetworks poll here.