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by Randy Ooney
My Nickel’s Worth by Randy Ooney
Rainout
We all knew it was inevitable. Our first game postponed due to bad weather at Target Field. It was about 37 degrees at the proposed game time, and weather pundits like Paul Douglas were forecasting snow. It seems weather casters love thunderstorms, tornados, hurricanes, and 100 mph straight line winds, so they can interrupt “60 Minutes” and really scare you. But - back to the game.
Maybe some ticket holders for the May 7th game against Baltimore were aware of the Twins policy, but I imagine more than a few were surprised by the “no refunds or exchanges”. After all, the tickets have a Rain Check stub, but it’s only valid for the rescheduled game. And since the game was rescheduled for the following night, if you can’t make it, you have no time to sell it on eBay or farm it out to Stub Hub. I don’t know how many ticket holders couldn’t make it to Saturday night’s game, but would it be that much of a hassle for the Twins to offer refunds? I realize that they have sold most of the tickets to future games, but they could be quick to announce tickets available for Saturday night, and probably sell most of the refunded tickets to walk up customers. The world isn’t going to end until December of 2012, so if they don’t want to give money back, at least they could offer an option to exchange for a 2011 game.
Imagine that you showed up at your favorite bowling center on league night and found that weather had damaged the roof, and the manager was around lane 16 in a lifeboat. He says, “Sorry, no bowling tonight, we have a problem. Just leave your $15.00 in a dry place on the desk and come back next week.” Most businesses would not treat their customers that way, but there’s only one Target Field in town.
The policy is not unprecedented. The Twins offered exchange dates to ticket holders for games at Met Stadium. This allowed season ticket holders to take unused tickets and hold a group outing for a less popular opponent, say Cleveland or Seattle. When the dome opened in 1982, they felt they didn’t need to offer this because weather was not a question. They soon found out that when the team loses 90 games every year, season ticket sales dwindle when they don’t offer customers an alternative way to use tickets. Sales became brisk in 1987, and when the Twins knocked off the Tigers in five games, I found myself with two tickets each for playoff games 6 and 7, with a face value of $30.00 each. Mr. Pohlad was a banker first, and a team owner second, and he found himself sitting on $2.5 million dollars of other peoples money, interest free. The Twins instructed ticket holders to hang on to the tickets while they figured out a way to issue refunds. The first offer was credit on a 1988 season ticket purchase. Finally, I received my refund around Christmas time that year. Take a look around the league, Twins. Formerly sold out every game Jacobs Field is now a pretty empty Progressive Park. Oriole Park at Camden Yards was sold out every day Cal Ripken Jr. played, which was every day. Now the turnstyles are getting rusty from lack of use. Don’t screw up a good thing.
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