There's no crying over recessions in baseball

Here's a NY Times article on the buoyancy of baseball during economic down times.

Sports leagues like the N.B.A., the N.F.L. and Major League Baseball are fairy-tale lands, an otherworld of packed stadiums, charter flights, multimillion-dollar training facilities, multimillion-dollar player contracts paid by multibillionaire owners.

Yet in a time of severe economic crisis, the leagues, at least for now, are holding forth, if not completely thriving.

Several theories explain why these sports leagues — especially baseball — thrive when money is tight. Baseball, to a greater extent than the N.F.L. and the N.B.A., is dependent on gate receipts. When families begin to feel the economic pinch and stay home rather than take a long trip, many choose to attend baseball games.

I think each moment such as this is different than one that came before it. Baseball needs to be careful. Ticket sales were down last year, and tickets are as pricey as ever at most parks. There's more out there entertainment-wise than ever before, so baseball better not just rely on the economics of yesteryear and think that they'll float through the lean times as easily as before.

Process this

An interesting commentary comes from ConsumerReports.org on MLB's postseason ticket policy. It's a complicated story, but it boils down to this: at least some tickets for postseason games come with a processing fee that goes to MLB, even if the game isn't played. So, if you buy a ticket for game seven, and the series ends in six, you can get your money back except for the processing fee, which baseball pockets.

I was surprised, to say the least. If I wanted a refund credited to my charge card, I’d have to apply for it within seven days of the final game of the series. No problem there. But the $20 “order-processing fee” was another matter. This fee amounted to half the price of the ticket, in the cheap seats where I had a chance of sitting. And it was not refundable, even if the game never happened!

Now that was a problem.

“Are you kidding?” I asked a telephone service representative for the Phillies. “How can you justify a charging a fee if the game wasn’t played?

“We have nothing to do with it,” the rep said. “Major League Baseball makes us do it. The money goes to them.”

That is outrageous. Anyone else run into this problem?