Thursday, September 30, 1999
Reds playoff seats still for sale
Cinergy outlet extends hours
BY MARK CURNUTTE
The Cincinnati Enquirer
Plenty of seats remain for seven potential National League playoff games that could be held in Cincinnati.
Some other teams have sold out, including the Reds' possible division series opponent, Arizona. But the Diamondbacks sold tickets for only one game.
Still, while tickets remain for possible games at Cinergy Field, this year won't be a repeat of 1995, say seasoned Reds watchers and dozens of fans. That was the year after the players' strike rubbed out the World Series. The Reds barely cracked 40,000 for games 1 and 2 of the 1995 National League Championship Series against Atlanta. TV cameras captured thousands of empty red seats in the outfield.
“That was terrible,” Kevin Conway said. He is a diehard Reds fan from Anderson Township who bought nine playoff tickets Wednesday afternoon at the Reds' Dugout Shop in the Westin Hotel.
“I'd say 85-90 percent of the fans are over the strike, but the 10 percent who aren't won't ever come back,” he said.
Mr. Conway, 28, attended 30 games this season at Cinergy. He and some friends will drive Friday to Milwaukee, where the Reds close out the regular season.
“We're bringing champagne to celebrate the pennant,” he said.
Reds General Manager Jim Bowden lamented over the weekend that the club didn't draw 2.5 million fans, which would have allowed him to re-sign high-priced free agents Greg Vaughn and Juan Guzman.
The Reds did draw 2 mil lion at home for the first time since 1993. And Kevin Grace, a University of Cincinnati instructor in sports sociology, speculates that the regular-season attendance figure and reportedly slow playoff ticket sales have more to with Fort Washington Way construction than lingering anger about the strike.
“A lot of Reds fans don't live in the city limits, so the construction and parking situation scared them away,” said Mr. Grace, assistant head of the university's archives.
Still, post-season sales are good enough that Reds officials on Wednesday asked fans who've ordered tickets with credit cards to pick up their tickets the day before the scheduled game to avoid box-office gridlock. The Reds have extended hours at the Cinergy Field box office to 9 a.m.-7 p.m. through Friday and 9 a.m.-5 p.m. Saturday and Sunday. Division series tickets are $20 and $30.
There are other possible explanations for post-season sales that might lag behind other cities.
A week ago this morning, the Reds were clinging to slim playoff hopes, 21/2 games behind both Houston and the New York Mets. Fans in Atlanta, Cleveland, Texas, Arizona and New York (Yankees) knew weeks ago that their teams were in the postseason.
“The Reds are beginning to benefit from high excitement,” said Roger Ruhl, vice president of marketing at the Greater Cincinnati Chamber of Commerce who was in marketing and publicity with the Reds from 1971 through '83. “Fans are just now realizing what they've got there.”
Mr. Ruhl also pointed out that 1995 was the first year that a second layer of league playoffs was added, just as the league championship series (LCS) was added in 1969.
“We had (Johnny) Bench, (Joe) Morgan and (Pete) Rose in the early 1970s, and we didn't sell out the LCS in 1972 against the Pirates,” Mr. Ruhl said. “It was not an automatic sellout. We had to work at it, and the fans had to get used to it.”
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