The Mets sold out today’s season opener and avoided a humiliating, unfilled house for the first game of 2012 when the home team downed the Atlanta Braves 1-0.
Team brass put the official attendance at 42,080 tickets sold — an all-time Citi Field high — for this afternoon’s game.
The Amazin’s benefitted from a brisk walk-up sale and the good weather. Despite the announced sellout, empty seats could be seen throughout the ballpark.
Fans, who assumed any real big-league team would have sold out for Opening Day weeks ago, were delighted to get inside for this sacred day of baseball.
Mets fan and Tampa resident Tony Esposito, a spending Easter weekend in New York, heard tickets were available and rushed straight from the airport to Citi Field.
“It’s the state of the Mets. It’s a sad state of affairs,” Esposito said, giddily leaving the box office with his ticket.
“It’s baseball. It was a spur-of-the-moment thing. I just got off the plane and heard there were still tickets left.”
Flushing faithful have sold out every Mets home opener since 1997, when rainouts forced an unexpected Sunday doubleheader for that year’s first game at Shea Stadium.
It wasn’t easy for the Mets to fill Citi Field today.
The team quietly bribed fans to buy seats for this afternoon, in exchange for seats to Saturday’s or Sunday’s games against the Braves. Weekend tickets for Atlanta were once hot sellers in the not-too-distant past when New York was once a consistent NL East contender.
The midweek day game was also gift for independently rich guys or the unemployed — or both, such as canned TV personality Keith Olbermann.
The perennially fired talking head, with no job to do today, took in the opener from press-box level. The loudmouth — and admitted baseball addict — said he appreciated the Mets’ tribute to fallen great Gary Carter.
The Kid passed away from cancer on Feb. 16 and the Amazin’s donned Carter’s No. 8 jerseys for batting practice.
“Lot of Carters out there,” Olbermann tweeted. “Somewhere The Kid is smiling broadly.”