33
April-8th-2005, 02:46 AM
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A35540-2005Apr7.html
Heavy Hitters Swing for the Seats
Pulling Strings Brings Big-Name Fans Better Nationals Tickets
By David A. Fahrenthold and Bill Brubaker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page A01
Right field is a ballpark's Siberia, and Robert D. Novak was not about to sit out there.
Like thousands of other baseball-starved fans, the syndicated columnist and television pundit signed up to buy season tickets for the Washington Nationals' inaugural year. And, like many others, he wasn't happy with the four seats he was assigned. Section 201, the right field corner.
"They were pretty close to Baltimore," he said.
Then Novak made a call. He won't say who was on the receiving end, but he does remember his request: Can you do a little better for us?
Three or four days later, Novak said, "they did." His group was upgraded to the first row of a 200-level section between home and first base.
Major League Baseball is returning to Washington after a 34-year absence, but the game of connections and status never left town. So for months, VIPs from business, politics and the media have been working to get choice tickets to Nationals games, with the best seats at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium taking on the cachet of a prime table at the Palm.
"I hear people actually bragging about where their seats are," said Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, who shares tickets with Novak. "I hate to admit it, but it is going to be a real status symbol."
Nationals executives said they tried to assign season tickets as fairly as possible, using a computerized lottery for some sections because the demand far exceeded the seats. About 13,000 people wanted an infield box seat, and there were only 5,000 of those tickets.
The team's job was complicated by the fact that RFK, a 45,500-seat publicly financed stadium built in 1961, has a dearth of the luxury suites commonly found in new ballparks. That left corporate ticket buyers to compete with the average fan for tickets.
"We did the best job that we could," Nationals President Tony Tavares said. "We went into this thing with a bent that said, 'We've got to be fair here.' "
Still, Tavares acknowledged that some people got special treatment. "I don't know what you want me to do, lie?" he said. "It's the same as everybody in baseball."
Who are these VIPs? Here the candor stops; Tavares won't say. But a number of Washington's elites have a ticket story to tell, even if they don't know -- or won't divulge -- exactly how they wound up with choice seats.
Michael Nannes owns eight season tickets with a few colleagues at Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP, where he is managing partner. All told, lawyers at the Washington firm control about 20 season tickets, he said. Asked how he ended up with eight seats near the Nationals' dugout, Nannes said: "This is Washington, right? Everyone has a friend someplace."
Later, he explained, "One of my colleagues had a contact with the Washington Baseball Club [a potential ownership group], and we got on the list very early. . . . We're very happy with the tickets, thank you very much."
Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, had to work for his hookup. He went through the team's lottery and was assigned seats several levels above the field. "Nosebleed," he said. "Just terrible."
After he rejected those tickets, Begala said, he found another option. His wife had a friend who knew an aide to James V. Kimsey, a founder of America Online. Kimsey is also a partner in the Washington Baseball Club. Now, Begala said, he's sharing tickets in Section 209, along the first base line.
"I'm happy as a clam," he said.
A more effortless connection was apparently made by journalist George F. Will, who has written books about baseball and frequently refers to the game in his columns. It seems to have been so easy that Will can't recall how it was done. "I don't even remember," he said. "It was a long time ago."
He, too, has seats along the first base line.
Some corporations and law firms, which often use their tickets to entertain current and prospective clients, were able to take a direct path. "I called the Nationals and said, 'I'm from Raytheon,' " said Miles Sawyer, manager of U.S. business development operations for the Massachusetts-based defense giant.
Though the company had waited to buy season tickets until spring training had begun, Sawyer said, Raytheon soon had eight seats in the lower infield boxes at RFK.
Experts on the business of sports said corporations are valued season-ticket holders because they can often afford to spend more than individual fans and are more likely to return year after year. A spokesman for The Washington Post, Eric Grant, said the newspaper has purchased 25 season tickets "through the regularly established process" for companies to sign up. Some of those seats are in the 100 and 200 levels, between first and third base, he said.
Corporations that agree to sponsorships or advertising deals with a team also typically receive tickets as part of those deals.
Most congressmen and senators surveyed don't seem to be buying season tickets. They don't have to; the office they hold is its own connection, since plenty of lobbyists have seats. Bucking this trend were U.S. Reps. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who have seats behind home plate. Spokesmen for the two said both bought into a season ticket group after the seats had been obtained.
Another journalist, Morton M. Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call, said he got his seats through a connection to the Washington Baseball Club. He started out by talking to David G. Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media Co. and another partner in the baseball club.
Now, Kondracke said, his group has seats in Section 215, one level up behind home plate. But, this being Washington, Kondracke is wondering about the people whose seats are one level closer to the action.
"There are apparently 900 seats better than me," he said. "So I wonder, who are these 900?"
Winston Lord, executive director of the Washington Baseball Club, said his organization compiled a long list of people interested in tickets. Nationals officials said they gave special consideration to many of the first names on that list, including 10 Washington Baseball Club investors.
Other VIPs said their first call was to a member of the quasi-independent D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, which oversees RFK. Those who took this route include Al Hunt, the Washington managing editor of Bloomberg News, who got his group tickets behind third base, and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who wound up along the first base line.
Evans also has seats with other council members in the city's box at RFK. The stadium is owned and maintained by the city.
All this connectedness has some Nats fans feeling left out. In vitriolic posts on Internet message boards, some have blamed "fat cats" for shoving them out to the outfield or up to the highest decks. "Us super-fans are going to be the lifeblood of this team and they already stuck us with bad seats," one fan wrote.
Disappointment with tickets isn't limited to the rank-and-file, though. Consider a group of well-known journalists: William Kristol and Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard and David Brooks of the New York Times. The three are sharing tickets and were assigned seats along the third base line that Brooks described in a column as being "somewhere south of Montreal" -- where the Nationals played as the Expos from 1969 to last year -- "but nowhere near home plate."
Ferguson complained to the team but got nowhere. He said he'd been consoling himself by thinking about Novak's original bad seats.
"I thought, well, this is a nice egalitarian thing, to know that Bob got screwed just as much as I did," he said.
He hadn't heard about Novak moving to better seats.
"Are you kidding?" Ferguson said. "Oh, that son of a gun."
Staff writer Barry Svrluga contributed to this report.
Heavy Hitters Swing for the Seats
Pulling Strings Brings Big-Name Fans Better Nationals Tickets
By David A. Fahrenthold and Bill Brubaker
Washington Post Staff Writers
Friday, April 8, 2005; Page A01
Right field is a ballpark's Siberia, and Robert D. Novak was not about to sit out there.
Like thousands of other baseball-starved fans, the syndicated columnist and television pundit signed up to buy season tickets for the Washington Nationals' inaugural year. And, like many others, he wasn't happy with the four seats he was assigned. Section 201, the right field corner.
"They were pretty close to Baltimore," he said.
Then Novak made a call. He won't say who was on the receiving end, but he does remember his request: Can you do a little better for us?
Three or four days later, Novak said, "they did." His group was upgraded to the first row of a 200-level section between home and first base.
Major League Baseball is returning to Washington after a 34-year absence, but the game of connections and status never left town. So for months, VIPs from business, politics and the media have been working to get choice tickets to Nationals games, with the best seats at Robert F. Kennedy Memorial Stadium taking on the cachet of a prime table at the Palm.
"I hear people actually bragging about where their seats are," said Fred Barnes, executive editor of the Weekly Standard, who shares tickets with Novak. "I hate to admit it, but it is going to be a real status symbol."
Nationals executives said they tried to assign season tickets as fairly as possible, using a computerized lottery for some sections because the demand far exceeded the seats. About 13,000 people wanted an infield box seat, and there were only 5,000 of those tickets.
The team's job was complicated by the fact that RFK, a 45,500-seat publicly financed stadium built in 1961, has a dearth of the luxury suites commonly found in new ballparks. That left corporate ticket buyers to compete with the average fan for tickets.
"We did the best job that we could," Nationals President Tony Tavares said. "We went into this thing with a bent that said, 'We've got to be fair here.' "
Still, Tavares acknowledged that some people got special treatment. "I don't know what you want me to do, lie?" he said. "It's the same as everybody in baseball."
Who are these VIPs? Here the candor stops; Tavares won't say. But a number of Washington's elites have a ticket story to tell, even if they don't know -- or won't divulge -- exactly how they wound up with choice seats.
Michael Nannes owns eight season tickets with a few colleagues at Dickstein Shapiro Morin & Oshinsky LLP, where he is managing partner. All told, lawyers at the Washington firm control about 20 season tickets, he said. Asked how he ended up with eight seats near the Nationals' dugout, Nannes said: "This is Washington, right? Everyone has a friend someplace."
Later, he explained, "One of my colleagues had a contact with the Washington Baseball Club [a potential ownership group], and we got on the list very early. . . . We're very happy with the tickets, thank you very much."
Paul Begala, a former adviser to President Bill Clinton, had to work for his hookup. He went through the team's lottery and was assigned seats several levels above the field. "Nosebleed," he said. "Just terrible."
After he rejected those tickets, Begala said, he found another option. His wife had a friend who knew an aide to James V. Kimsey, a founder of America Online. Kimsey is also a partner in the Washington Baseball Club. Now, Begala said, he's sharing tickets in Section 209, along the first base line.
"I'm happy as a clam," he said.
A more effortless connection was apparently made by journalist George F. Will, who has written books about baseball and frequently refers to the game in his columns. It seems to have been so easy that Will can't recall how it was done. "I don't even remember," he said. "It was a long time ago."
He, too, has seats along the first base line.
Some corporations and law firms, which often use their tickets to entertain current and prospective clients, were able to take a direct path. "I called the Nationals and said, 'I'm from Raytheon,' " said Miles Sawyer, manager of U.S. business development operations for the Massachusetts-based defense giant.
Though the company had waited to buy season tickets until spring training had begun, Sawyer said, Raytheon soon had eight seats in the lower infield boxes at RFK.
Experts on the business of sports said corporations are valued season-ticket holders because they can often afford to spend more than individual fans and are more likely to return year after year. A spokesman for The Washington Post, Eric Grant, said the newspaper has purchased 25 season tickets "through the regularly established process" for companies to sign up. Some of those seats are in the 100 and 200 levels, between first and third base, he said.
Corporations that agree to sponsorships or advertising deals with a team also typically receive tickets as part of those deals.
Most congressmen and senators surveyed don't seem to be buying season tickets. They don't have to; the office they hold is its own connection, since plenty of lobbyists have seats. Bucking this trend were U.S. Reps. James P. Moran Jr. (D-Va.) and Thomas M. Davis III (R-Va.), who have seats behind home plate. Spokesmen for the two said both bought into a season ticket group after the seats had been obtained.
Another journalist, Morton M. Kondracke, executive editor of Roll Call, said he got his seats through a connection to the Washington Baseball Club. He started out by talking to David G. Bradley, chairman of Atlantic Media Co. and another partner in the baseball club.
Now, Kondracke said, his group has seats in Section 215, one level up behind home plate. But, this being Washington, Kondracke is wondering about the people whose seats are one level closer to the action.
"There are apparently 900 seats better than me," he said. "So I wonder, who are these 900?"
Winston Lord, executive director of the Washington Baseball Club, said his organization compiled a long list of people interested in tickets. Nationals officials said they gave special consideration to many of the first names on that list, including 10 Washington Baseball Club investors.
Other VIPs said their first call was to a member of the quasi-independent D.C. Sports and Entertainment Commission, which oversees RFK. Those who took this route include Al Hunt, the Washington managing editor of Bloomberg News, who got his group tickets behind third base, and D.C. Council member Jack Evans (D-Ward 2), who wound up along the first base line.
Evans also has seats with other council members in the city's box at RFK. The stadium is owned and maintained by the city.
All this connectedness has some Nats fans feeling left out. In vitriolic posts on Internet message boards, some have blamed "fat cats" for shoving them out to the outfield or up to the highest decks. "Us super-fans are going to be the lifeblood of this team and they already stuck us with bad seats," one fan wrote.
Disappointment with tickets isn't limited to the rank-and-file, though. Consider a group of well-known journalists: William Kristol and Andrew Ferguson of the Weekly Standard and David Brooks of the New York Times. The three are sharing tickets and were assigned seats along the third base line that Brooks described in a column as being "somewhere south of Montreal" -- where the Nationals played as the Expos from 1969 to last year -- "but nowhere near home plate."
Ferguson complained to the team but got nowhere. He said he'd been consoling himself by thinking about Novak's original bad seats.
"I thought, well, this is a nice egalitarian thing, to know that Bob got screwed just as much as I did," he said.
He hadn't heard about Novak moving to better seats.
"Are you kidding?" Ferguson said. "Oh, that son of a gun."
Staff writer Barry Svrluga contributed to this report.