Some good and bad news for 2007

The last 24 hours have been a real high for Ranger fans. I think the majority of us will say that the hiring of Ron Washington is a positive for us. I personally wasn’t one of the people with pitchforks and torches running behind Mr. Showalter, but I can see the arguments for change. Ron Washington’s choice surprised me. I fully expected it to be Wakamatsu or Hillman. I figured Washington was a serious candidate, but didn’t think he would be picked. Now that he has been, it just “feels” right. Can’t quantify that with any hard facts, I just get the feeling based on what I’ve read from Oakland players that this will be a great move for us.
It’s in the wake of this high that I found some other information about the 2007 season that I don’t believe has been mentioned anywhere before. Most of this is good. One thing if I understand it correctly is not good. Today in the mail, I got a flyer with various group ticket options for 2007. There is a schedule in here, which shows times for the 2007 games; that was new information. The 2007 promotions schedule is also in here. Neither of these pieces of information are on the Rangers site as of this posting. Here’s a summary of the bullet points from reading this flyer:
Not good stuff:

• Parking next season will be $12. Actually that info did not come from the flyer; I knew that back in October when I pre-paid for some parking. So that’s a change.
• It would appear that the Rangers are adopting that “charge higher ticket prices for higher profile opponents” thing that’s been floating around for awhile. The reason I think this is happening is the flyer has several different kinds of rates for group tickets. One of them is “Big Games”. In that section appears the text… “These are the biggest games with the best opponents on the best nights. Access reuglar gate prices and avoid paying premium individal prices for Yankees and Red Sox games.“. Now while this does not explicitly state they’re charging higher for Yankees/Red Sox games, it reads that way to be cause of the “premium prices”. I could be wrong about that, I can see where it could be translated another way, but the fact that they have a category called “Big Games” makes me think that’s what they’re doing.

Other Stuff:

• Every single home game in June, July, & August has a start time of 7:35PM. There’s one exception to that, the Sunday game on Jul 8, before the All Star Break is at 2:05, but all the other Jun/Jul/Aug home games are 7:35. Good, good, GOOD. I just wish the ones in April, May, & September were like that, too (they’re still 7:05). But I’ll take this. It’s a good move, as I have to drive 34 miles from my house to the Ballpark through the downtown Dallas mixmaster.
• Sunday day games in April, May, & September return to their old time of 2:05PM instead of the 1:05 they’ve been at the last few years. Weekday day games remain at 1:05.
• It appears they’re adding a regular promotion. There appears to be a $2 T-Shirt Tuesday on many dates. From the name it appears you can get a T-Shirt for $2, but that’s all the info on that promotion. I expect we’ll be able to buy some of the lesser T-Shirts for $2; I’m sure we’ll hear more about that later.
• Initially, there’s only three bobbleheads listed. I know these things tend to change/get added once the season gets going, but that’s all that’s listed for now. Two of them are “connected” in some capacity. The ones on May 4 & May 11 are a “Doubple Play Combo Bobblehead”. One is Mike Young, one is Ian Kinsler. How they’re “connected”, I don’t know.
• The usual promotions are here. Fireworks, Dollar Hot Dog night, Autograph Wednesdays, $1 Ice Cream Sundays, etc…

So the only real “bad” news out of this is the “Big Games” concept. The $12 parking isn’t much fun. If management wants less empty seats, they need to make some incentives towards the fans like Tampa Bay has been doing (free parking!). Yeah, I know – we’ll hear the line about “Win, and they’ll come”. Sure, that’s true, but I went to a lot of games late last year, where the number of empty seats was OBSCENE. I can tell you why. Too DAMNED expensive. And the tickets aren’t the problem. Gas, parking, cost of food, etc, etc, etc. THAT’s where the cuts need to be made. Not another half price ticket deal. Not a free pair of tickets once in a while (that’s nice, though). The tickets are actually the cheapest parto f the equation when coming to the game. Oh look, there I go ranting about cost of attendance again. If I’m gonna stop doing that, I need a REAL incentive to come out more often. Not more bobbleheads or a half price ticket (which by the way even at half price is still more than it should really cost, but that’s another rant).
I’ll have the 2007 schedule online shortly with the times in this flyer.