Sunday, December 9, 2007

Sense For the Centsless


Thank you Dave (Ficklin) and Dave (WizardsCharter) for making the most sense out of this yet. I am a firm believer in communication. I believe this to be true of most people that if you explain the reason(s) behind decisions most people will accept the decision easier than handing it down as law.

This being said I want to say I was originally quite frustrated by the new costs to sit in the Cauldron. I do not have a lot of disposable money and my entertainment dollars go almost entirely to the Wizards. It was pretty hard to understand how the FO was doing us a favor by charging such a price for metal bleacher seats that the T-bones are getting to keep.

I could begin to justify this more in my mind if I believed that part of the 2008 STH Cauldron price was to begin to pay for a new stadium. I wish it were more about building on our future and less about covering construction costs for upgrades to a minor league ballpark.

I am grateful that Kansas City still has a soccer team and we didn’t have to see them leave only to have to bid on an expansion team once we finally had a SSS built, assuming that Kansas City would have continued to prove that it loved the beautiful game enough to make this happen. Perhaps its easier to be short sighted and complain about costs than to look into the reason for the price hike.

I accept this price hike like swallowing a double-edged sword. On one hand I see the need to cover the construction costs at CAB and to begin to build the Cauldron foundation outside the “hallowed” walls of Arrowhead. (Alas this foundation will cost quite a bit to move yet again.) On the other hand I also see the FO for the crafty foxes they are. Similar to the oil companies it’s easier to stomach today’s fuel prices after having paid in the low 3s earlier this year. Raise the price, knock it down, raise it again. By the time we move into the Three Trails SSS we won’t choke quite so quickly on the price they will want the 12th man to pay.

Oh but the price would be greater without a home team. The price of silence, beauty lost, aspirations fading. I will pay to keep the cacophony of the Cauldron, the beauty of the game and the dreams of the youth who play to one day be a Wizard.




"As long as Qi flows freely through the meridians and the Organs work in harmony, the body can avoid disease."

This has been,
Baines Qi

5 comments:

szazzy said...

Wouldn't this complaint have been better directed to the front office personnel directly instead of this anonymous smear tactics crap?

What change could you possibly expect going through this route?

Congrats, whatever point you might have had is now overshadowed by the fact that you're too much of a coward to put your name behind a complaint.

Jeff Szajnuk
- szazzy

Anonymous said...

Jeff, I've seen you make comments like this on bigsoccer about Baine's blog. Baine is just like anyone on bigsoccer, he's just doing it in blog form. What more is an internet forum then a place for blind bashing of players/team officials/etc? Maybe (s)he's seen how people attack other people when they have opinions different then the norm. There's no problem with that.

People don't have to be known to make their opinions. For instance I'm choosing to remain anonymous with this comment, cause I feel like it.

And overall I felt this entry by Baines Qi is fairly positive. (S)he states how they've come to the understanding of why the Cauldron price is what it is. He's not pissed at the price we have to pay, he understands it's part of business. As he said in the end, the raised price is a much lower price then not having a team at all.

szazzy said...

This is not about how positive someone is in a post.

I'm not debating the points made, just pointing out that this method of delivery achieves zero results unless you're outing secrets or are in some sort of danger if your name is exposed.

Do you want results, or do you just want to hear yourself talk?

Maybe the price could actually be affected if you chose to put your real name behind a complaint and directed it to the people that have say over such things?

Wizards fans that frequent online forums, and especially Cauldron members, enjoy whining about perceived injustices more than being a supporter of their team - we're talking inane, stupid stuff, like - Who gets the credit when people show up to games and stand with the Cauldron?

The anonymous complaints that were so numerous that we need a whole website devoted to them is just another sad example of how much better the Cauldron could be if it actually had central members that spent less time complaining and more time actually doing things to achieve tangible results for the group.

Despite having one of the most fan-friendly front offices ever conceived in American sports, I wouldn't be surprised if this complaint website sees more Cauldron traffic than the Cauldron's own official site.

-Jeff

Anonymous said...

The so called "price hike" is just over $1.60 per ticket.

and btw - everything we pay that the Wizards make in a profit, could technically be said to go toward a new stadium.

That said, I'd not be surprised if the Wizards are losing money on our section.

Anonymous said...

It's a price hike of $1.60 per game for an 18 ticket season ticket package. How many games are the Wizards playing at home this season? 15. How many home playoff games can the Wizards have? 2 max. That leaves one extra ticket.

That extra ticket is either for 2 things, 1 to make the price hike look smaller, or 2 there's some kind of game in the plans. Since we're in a baseball stadium and unlikely to get any good type of friendly, my guess is on the first one.