Meet the Mets, and their angry celebrity fans

Trying to sell people on a losing baseball team is always an intriguing marketing proposition, and something, as a Mets fan, I'm quite familiar with. It's a little disturbing to drive by Shea Stadium midseason to see a slogan proudly declaring that "The Magic Is Back," when a look at the box score makes it plain that any magic left the building way before the All-Star break. So this year, the Mets have embarked on a ploy to make the team appear that it's popular among celebrities—and that those celebrities get really pissed off when someone else buys the seats they've been sitting in for years. The record be damned! Yesterday, the team e-mailed out a link to its fans to a radio ad in which John Leguizamo claims his seats had been stolen. In an earlier ad, the offended celebrity was Jon Stewart. The spots' tagline is wisely noncommittal about the team's prospects this year: "The team. The time. The Mets."

—Posted by Catharine P. Taylor

Credit: Photo by Rena Durham - KPA/ZUMA Press

March 23, 2006 | Permalink