Major League Baseball's Florida Marlins have found an unusual way to boost their attendance, peddling unused tickets from last Saturday when Philadelphia's Roy Halladay hurled a perfect game.
Halladay's 1-0 gem over the Marlins, only the 20th perfect game in US major league history, was viewed by an announced crowd of 25,086 but that official attendance figure will rise with every souvenir ticket sold after the fact.
The Marlins sold more than 3,000 tickets at face values between 12 and 300 dollars in the first four hours they were on sale, Marlins president Davis Samson said Tuesday, with many seats available for 25 dollars or less.
All the people were buying seats for a game none of them can ever actually attend -- all in the name of owning a piece of baseball history.
"We're not misleading anybody," Samson said. "No one is buying a ticket thinking they are going to the game. Nobody is saying, 'Oh, my God, I wonder who wins?' So it's not as if there is any consumer fraud that is going on.
"It's history. I don't want to reiterate this too many times - 20 perfect games in the history of the game."
The Marlins need all the help they can get at the turnstiles because they rank last in National League attendance with an average of 16,764 spectators a game, ahead of only American League clubs Cleveland and Toronto.
Tickets will remain on sale through the end of the season in September.
Copyright 2010 AFP Global Edition
