I did go to the Ironpig’s Pig Day event today. I have to say it was a great time.
I showed up a minute or two after the 9:00am start time and was met by a long line of folks waiting to buy tickets.
9:00AM
Luckily, there were a bunch of happy and nice people around me and we enjoyed conversations about baseball’s past, prospects and jokes about the snow that came down steadily until around 10. Slowly but surely I navigated the maze of barriers until I got to the ticket booth to buy All Star game tickets for a bunch of friends. I am a season ticket holder so already had mine, but call me a faithful fan and friend.. I did this for fun.
12:30PM
After 3+ hours in line, in snow and cold and wind, I had my tickets. I wandered into the stadium and got myself a free hotdog. By this time the free pork was long gone as was most of the Coca Cola and Philly Pretzels. I bought a few raffle tickets to support our friends in Haiti and then took a few swings in the batting cages.
Batting Cages
Needless to say, I haven’t picked up a baseball bat since I was 17 years old. I got some good contact but my timing was way off. Baseball America can keep me off of their top prospects list, for now.
It was a great day and gave us all a taste of the quality baseball to come on April 14th and all summer.
Note: The Noise Nation received some great news today… stay tuned when we release this information.
noisenation.mlblogs.com 
How was the availability, as far as you could tell? I went online earlier in the week (S/T pre-sale event) to buy single-game tix and was surprised at the dearth of available tickets for field-level seats on the days in question. Did the rest of the crowd seem satisfied with their purchases? Did folks leave empty handed? Are there games that are “sell-outs” already (besides maybe opening day)? Do you think maybe they opened up some of the “group” sections that they normally reserve for that purpose, in order to satisfy the long line?
Just wondering.
As far as what I observed everyone was super happy. I noticed last year that they usually set aside group tickets and player tickets until a day or so before the game. Keeping in mind that there are 10,000 tickets available for each game and historically only opening day has sold out early in sales I don’t see anything different about this year. I would almost bet that 50-60% of the folks in line were there to get all star game tickets. The more popular tickets, Pawtucket (Red Sox) and Scranton (Yankees) usually sell out quick a week or so before the season. I could imagine Buffalo will sell out quickly this year also once the fan base figures out that Mike Cervenak will be there.
Thanks for the reply. I’m glad it went OK for everyone concerned: fans and management. The press in the paper this morning was positive.
I went back on the single-game portal on the web, and there are plenty of seats left for many games. It appears that I was just looking at popular dates. BTW, there are like 8100 fixed seats, right? The rest are GA/lawn. I think they consider it a ‘sellout’ whenever all the seats are sold, regardless of acutal attendance or GA sales.
Side note: interesting how they’re going to use the lawn and dugouts for (advertiser) hospitality during the ASG and HRD. I’m currently on the lookout for an invite…trying to figure out which advertisers I have a relationship with. Perhaps if I purchase a new Toyota (insert joke here). I mean, I have my regular tickets, but if there’s free hospitality, I’m up for that too!
Thanks again, looking forward to a great season…
My neighbor was there and probably got his tickets about the same time as you. Maybe he was one of the people around you in line. He was getting tickets for the giveaway days he wanted (bobblehead days and a few others). My most anticipated giveaway day so far is the Allentown Cardinals throwback caps. As for me, I was probably getting out of bed about the time you were purchasing tickets so I made my hot dogs at home.
Spring training games begin Tuesday on the mlb network. I think the 1 PM games this week are Braves/Mets on Tuesday; Pirates/Yankees on Wednesday; Cardinals/Mets on Thursday (with the Phillies/Yankees on Comcast and Halladay on the mound), and finally the Rays/Yankees on Friday.