Postseason Tickets Aren't Selling For Face Value?!?!?

Ken Belson of the NYT Bats Blog seems genuinely surprised, if not appalled that you won't be able to buy Yankees playoff tickets for $5.

The Yankees made a big deal out of their decision to hold ticket prices steady for the first round of the playoffs. That’s right, even those $5 seats in the center-field bleachers with obstructed views of the field would remain $5 when the Yankees play either the Detroit Tigers or the Minnesota Twins next week.

But unless you are a season ticket-holder, forget about that $5 price. Fans selling those bleacher seats on line are charging no less than $98 each for a chance to see about two-thirds of the field, according to FanSnap, a Web site that scans dozens of ticket resellers.

Raise your hand if you were counting on purchasing a Yankees playoff ticket for $5. Okay, now keep it in the air, clench your fingers into a fist and punch yourself in the face.

The Yankees made a big deal of the pricing structure for the P.R. boost after all the negative press over their ticket pricing for the regular season. This year, as has been the case ever since the Yanks went on their dynastic run, there only a precious few postseason tickets available to the general public. A few weeks back, Ross from New Stadium Insider did some quick calculations and estimated the amount of available tickets for each round of the postseason to be:

ALDS: 4,735
ALCS: 3,235
WS: 735

It doesn't take a mathematician to decipher that, unless you are a season ticket holder, you are going to be paying through to nose to observe some playoff baseball in the Bronx.

Bait & Switch?

This morning I got an email from the Yankees, informing me of the possibility of $5 tickets to the Oakland series in selected areas of the Grandstand, Terrace and Bleachers. They can't all be obstructed view, one would assume, so I decided to check it out.


I clicked through and was taken to a page with the following on it:


I selected the 4/21 game against Oakland.


Here's the problem, though:

There is no option for $5 seats anywhere. I tried to get regular bleacher seats and they were entirely sold out. They didn't offer any promotional code to enter either. I think you just can't buy them online, which is perfect, considering they are advertising their availability via electronic mail.

Not one to just give up on a bargain, I bit the bullet and called the Ticketmaster phone number listed above. You have to listen to a computerized woman's voice count down every price range "Two, thousand... six, hundred and twenty, five... dollars, to... six, hundred... and, twenty, five, dollars" and obviously the $5 seats were at the very bottom. Unfortunately, me shouting "representative" or "operator" did not get me on the phone with an actual person.

Every step in the process was a giant pain in the ass, including having to verbally spell out my first and last name and billing address. I did get the tickets, though, and they are in Section 306, where presumably myself and whoever I go with will be straddling the foul pole.

Not to fear, it's only $5 a pop, and we'll probably just chill near the Bleachers Cafe or see what other sections we can finagle ourselves into. The $5 tickets are a pretty awesome deal, but you'd think that if they really wanted to sell them, they'd make them easier to buy. The shitty part is that the fact that something involving tickets and the New Stadium was annoying and poorly organized just isn't surprising anymore.