Nationals management is a joke

In case you required additional evidence that the Lerner family, which owns the Washington Nationals, cares only about money and not at all about its own fans, consider the huge number of Philadelphia Phillies fans at the season opener in Nationals Park. It turns out huge ticket purchases were made by groups in Philadelphia, including a website called Phillies Nation, and the Washington Nationals front office helped them do it, thus depriving Nats fans of tickets. In other words, the Nationals front office knowingly and willingly filled the stadium with fans of the visiting team on opening day.

The Nationals ticket office put no restrictions on the amount of group tickets that well-organized Phillies fans could buy before traveling down in buses. These group tickets were placed on sale well before individual tickets were ever made available to the public and allowed the group from Phillies Nation to buy a whopping 530 tickets for fans and friends of the blog.

What’s even more galling to Nats fans is Brian Michael of Phillies Nation revealing that he didn’t even have to take his own initiative to purchase the seats. He says a Nats ticket rep called him last December based on a previous ticket purchase he had made with the team. The folks at Phillies Nation are fine people and you certainly can’t blame them or other Phillies fans for taking the opportunity offered.

The Nats apparently cut off group sales in February after realizing that Phillies fans were going to run amok. But the damage was done and, after this circus show, Nationals fans have a right to be outraged and to lose faith in an organization that doesn’t put much faith in them in the first place….

And lest you think that the local interest was lacking, opening day officially sold out in seven minutes when the Nationals placed individual tickets on sale in early March.

It was bad enough last year when Nats Prez Stan Kasten went on Phillies sports talk radio to urge Phillies fans to buy tickets to the opener in Washington. But since that apparently wasn’t insulting enough, now the Nationals are selling tickets to Phillies fans before Nats fans even get a chance to buy them.

Hey, Lerners and Kasten: Go fornicate yourselves with a rusty flagpole!