Artificial Attendance Inflators? Oh, Lay Off the Fish, Forbes

The worst-attended team isn't the first to sell perfect game tix, but look out for their numbers! They're steroid-inflated!

Haters gonna hate, and as fans it's sometimes our job to be some of them.

But for crying out loud, of all the reasons to be annoyed with our baseball club, Forbes sure picked a silly one.

Take a gander at what the mag's SportsMoney section has to say about the so-called "Kings Of Artificial Attendance Inflators"' sale of leftover tickets from Saturday's perfect game:

The most brazen attendance inflator and revenue grab now goes hands down to the Florida Marlins, who...continue to sell unused tickets for last Saturday’s perfect game by Roy Halladay of the Phillies...

A report adds that, “Because money collected from this venture counts toward ticket sales revenue, it is subject to Major League Baseball's revenue sharing rules. The attendance of Saturday's game (25,086) actually will increase.” Well, that’s certainly good news. After all, it’s not as if the Marlins haven’t been living off revenue-sharing welfare in the past, and got their hand slapped for it.

The Marlins will sell this off (no pun intended) as souvenirs and keepsakes. But selling them at face value goes beyond opportunistic, and given that the tickets count against attendance, can we suggest placing an asterisk next to the Marlins steroid-inflated attendance numbers at the end of the season?

Never mind that the Marlins aren't the first team to sell tickets to a perfect game after it happened, or that face value in Miami Gardens is a metric fishton cheaper than in New York, and let's get to the good stuff: Forbes calls out the Fish for living off revenue-sharing, which is valid, but then faults them for making a much-needed buck when history drops in their lap.

Revenue grab? You bet your sweet bippy, misters. Which way do you want it?

The Fish have sold over 6,000 face-value tickets since they went on re-sale, proving that Phillies fans certainly don't mind the Marlins' "beyond opportunistic" venture. Assuming all sale prices at $16 each (the cheapest available Wednesday), that is, at least, an estimated $96,000 this cash-grubbing succubus of a franchise didn't have before Saturday.

And an extra $96,000 they won't need -- or get -- from revenue sharing.

So why is Forbes offended? Sure, baseball purists might think a post-mortem sale is unseemly, but baseball purists are all dead by now and the rest of us enjoy the jokes. The Marlins already have the 2nd-worst attendance in the National League, and, if the current per-game average (dead last) holds, that "steroid-inflated" portion of their "artificial attendance" amounts to .22% of their total.

That's less than a quarter of 1%, for the math-challenged. For an extra $96,000, we're pretty sure the Marlins would happily asterisk that all day long.

And anyway, the thing to be upset about is the Marlins' plan to display the home plate from Halladay's game at their new ballpark in Little Havana, despite the fact that it's a relic of a loss in a crappy old football stadium. Might as well paint a giant "L" on the retractable roof and shadowbox a Yankees pennant: an extra revenue stream is a thing of beauty, but self-esteem clearly can't be bought.

Janie Campbell is a Florida native who believes in the pro-set and ballpark hot dogs. Her work has appeared in irreverent sports sites around the internet.

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