Good Seats Still Available!

Have you considered going to a Marlins game this year? Of course you haven’t. You are a person of taste and discernment. It’s why you frequent all the best websites and also NotGraphs. You know that attending Marlins games only serves to prop up the failing tyrannical regime of Jeffrey Loria, the very antithesis of the benevolent despot we generally prefer to the chaotic meanderings and whims of a government by and for the people. For while the tyranny of the majority is terrible, truly the tyranny of the art dealer turned sports mogul is even worse.

So no, you will not be attending any Marlins games this year. And neither, frankly, will anyone else worth his or her salt. For the Marlins are actually having to resort to a two-for-one Groupon ticket offering to get people to show up on Opening Day. Opening Day is amateur hour, when every Tom, Dick, and Harry who likes to claim they’re a baseball fan but who constantly complains that the games are too long and boring commute to the park to get drunk with like-minded rabble, and then slosh homeward for the rest of the season. The Marlins can’t even fill their ballpark with those dillweeds.

As far as I can tell, the Marlins didn’t even come up with a marketing slogan for 2013 (unless “Single game tickets on sale now!” counts. Sean Flynn (the Marlins’ vice president for marketing) promised we would have one over a month ago. Not that I want to encourage anyone to attend Marlins games going forward, but I do want Flynn to be able to keep his job (especially since he’s probably losing his pension). So he should totally feel free to use any of these to entice people to come out to the ballpark:

1) Where the players will be sure to hear your thoughtfully vocalized criticisms!

2) Seriously, we didn’t trade Mike Stanton. He just changed his name. Same guy; we promise!

3) Marlins Park, now enochlophobic-friendly!

4) Tepidly endorsed by Jeff Conine!

5) Remember how much you loved the Indians in Major League? Same basic deal.

6) If you prefer, we don’t have to play baseball, and you can just enjoy a quiet, restful, 3 hour nap.

7) Feel free to just move in. Rent is reasonable.

8) Life is one long string of disappointments and broken dreams. So what’s one more?

9) Turner, Nolasco, Three days of fiasco!

10) People, good people, work for this organization. Families depend on that income. My family depends on this income. If you’re not going to come out for the Marlins, or for the ballpark, or some misplaced sense of civic responsibility, or a chance to boo the owner in person, at least come out for their kids. Come out for my kids. Look, here’s Billy. He’s eight years old and he’s going to need braces. This is Emily. She’s my little princess and says she wants to go to medical school so she can help sick people. I mean, that’s still years and years off, but school is expensive and we’re already trying to put money away. We really like Miami, and don’t want to have to move, especially with the housing market what it is. I think our place would be on the market forever, and we’d have to dip into savings to be able to afford two mortgages. And how long can that last, really? I mean, it would be one thing if my folks had socked anything away before mom finally passed last year, but she and dad were both school teachers, you know? There just wasn’t much left after funerals, and taxes, and splitting the money with my good-for-nothing brother Jerry, who’s probably went through most of it in Atlantic City the next weekend. I need this job, ok? I know we should have rented; I tried to tell Michelle that, but she really wanted a place that we could just call our own, you know? And I could never say no to her. Not when she looks at me all earnest and tells me she just knows it’s going to all work out, because God has a plan and she believes in me. Just please. Come to one game. Please. For me? For all of us? I don’t know what I’m going to do if I lose this job. Oh God, please! I’ve got to meet with Loria and Samson on Friday morning!

Please, suggest your own inferior alternatives in the usual place.