>Newsday on "45,000"

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The Mets Police brought this up about a month ago. You can announce 45,000 all you want (yeah yeah paid attendance) but the fact of the matter is the stadium is half empty. How many of you have season plans where you “eat” tickets?

“We trimmed the attendance again,” the Old Perfessor used to say, which was 1962-speak for ripping off the fans. But back then, tickets cost a buck or two, games were over in a merciful two hours and nothing was expected of those Mets teams anyway.Forty-something years later, fans expect a bang or two for their 40 bucks a ticket and the three-plus hours spent shivering in a rusting junkheap of a ballpark. Mets fans have become notorious for their big mouths and short fuses, but last night, they booed loud, long and with plenty of justification.

Last night, more than 45,000 paid for their tickets and no more than half bothered to use them. The ones that did left disappointed, angered and in the idiom of Casey, trimmed.

Wallace Watthews in Newsday here