Who’s the Crazy Here?
Tom Boswell’s column in today’s Post talks about Orioles owner Peter Angelos’s full page ad/rant in the Sunday Post apparently aimed at the same fans he claims to want to continue to lure to Baltimore to watch the Orioles. Somehow he’s gotten the idea that because there was no competition when he moved in, that means there should never be competition as long as he says so and thinks that the Nationals should have to broadcast their games through his enterprise rather than creating their own.
But here’s the thing, Pete – the fans you had weren’t Orioles’ fans; they were baseball’s fans whose love of the game overcame the obstacles to their attendance. I only ever bothered to go through the hassle of getting to Baltimore from Arlington, VA when the Yankees were in town, and then you complained about all the Yankee fans in your park.
To quote Eddie Murphy, if you give a starving man a cracker, he’s going to think it’s a Ritz. And you didn’t even give us whole crackers – you gave us crumbs. You let train service be cut back so that it was impossible to “take the Marc to the Park” and forced anyone from Washington foolish enough to attempt to attend a weekday evening game to drive and find parking. You disparage us by saying there aren’t any true baseball fans in DC then cry foul when we get a team (especially one that is selling a serious number of season tickets and ticket packages).
Scarcity of product can’t be your main business strategy – you have to be smarter than that. Maybe having a better product and attracting new customers instead of alienating entire metro regions would be a better marketing strategy? I’m just saying…
this is soooo true.
As an Alexandria resident who went to a Friday night game last year, left at 3pm, and proceeded to spend 3 hours in traffic.
Never ever, NEVER again.
Angelos can keep his crappy team and greedy self in Balm’r hon.
Go Nats!
Yeah, as much of a pain as it was to get to and from Baltimore (What do you mean MARC trains don’t run that late?!?! Crap!) you would think Angelos could have at least been nice about all this. But, instead, he’s being a spoiled 8 year old.
GO NATS!
The lack of train service is particularly interesting in light of how much the Redskins pay to keep Metro running after Monday Night games to make sure everyone has that option. So, clearly there are ways, it just depends on whether you understand that the entire experience is part of your product and responsibility, not just when the people are handing over their money.