Listen, if there’s any precept that has been reinforced over the last month, it is that pro sports are now driven by star-power and marquee attractions.
The Mets, scrappy team that they generally have been, lack both, just as they correspondingly lacked fans in the Citi Field stands last night for their 3-1 defeat to the Central-leading Reds.
The crowd was announced at a little more than 30,000, but there were scads of empty seats in not only the expensive section of the ballpark, but in the cheap seats in the outfield grandstands, a far more troubling reflection of this team’s inability to connect (or re-connect) with the fan base that still seems to carry a sense of betrayal from the last three years.
ACCUSCORE: LEE WOULD BE DIFFERENCE
When you build a stadium or an arena with a comparatively small capacity, as the Wilpons did with their 41,800-seat ballyard that can hold up to 45,000 including standing room, you do so to establish urgency among the clientele and to maximize the advance sale. No franchise wants to rely on walk-up sales.
But that’s where the Mets are these days, without a marquee attraction to encourage a rush at the box office. If you want to make the case they have been swallowed up whole by the LeBron James circus, go ahead, but keep in mind that the Yankees were able to pull their customary 46,000 into their House over the weekend.
But then, they are the Yankees, the team that carries the title on the marquee. They are the Yankees, the team that understands the currency of the day. And look, everyone knows that the Garden teams have been horribly flawed for most of the last decade, but the Knicks and the Rangers always have spent money, even if often to their detriment.
They’ve gotten it wrong, but they’ve gone for it. There is a sense, a real sense, that the Mets are now operating as a mid-market club, unwilling or unable to dive in to attract the best that money can buy, even if they most assuredly did lavish a $137.5 million guaranteed contract on Johan Santana a couple of winters ago.
Maybe that perception is unfair to ownership, but it’s as real as last night’s empty seats and as real as the frustration of the fan base that already is resigned to losing Cliff Lee to a higher lend-lease bidder this summer and prepared to lose the left-hand ace to the Yankees this winter.
There’s no buzz around the Mets, who appeared particularly lethargic in last night’s loss that sealed the club’s first losing series in their last seven at home since May 10-12, when the Mets lost two of three to the pre-Stephen Strasburg Nationals.
Don’t look now, but the Mets only have gone 8-10 since their shutout victory at Yankee Stadium on June 18. And having fallen three games back of Atlanta in the East, there will be urgency this weekend when the Braves come in for three.
There will be urgency to prove that this series against the Reds was nothing more than a speed-bump, because when play resumes following the All-Star break, the Mets will confront an 11-game journey out west featuring four in San Francisco, three in Arizona and four in Los Angeles.
Just the specter of such a trek brought out the stoic in manager Jerry Manuel, the generally optimistic manager, who could not find his rose-colored glasses for his pre-game press briefing.
“The good thing about it is that it comes right after [the break], so it gives us the chance to recuperate if it doesn’t work out right,” Manuel said before Bronson Arroyo stymied his team in the Reds’ 3-1 win.
The Mets are in a unique situation, for they’re not only competing against the Braves and Phillies, et al, in their division, they compete with the Yankees in their city and they compete for the dollars of New Yorkers who crave-no; demand-star power.
It’s a tough proposition. A bad weekend against the Braves will make it all the more difficult.