Marlins selling tickets to Halladay's perfect game

[June 02, 2010]  MIAMI (AP) -- Sorry you weren't there for Roy Halladay's perfect game? You can be.

The Florida Marlins are putting tickets on sale for Halladay's gem -- as souvenirs, at face price. Buy one, and they'll even count you in the official paid attendance.

Halladay pitched the Philadelphia Phillies over the Marlins on Saturday night. It was the 20th perfect game in major league history, and the crowd was announced at 25,086.

Marlins president David Samson said Tuesday the team sold more than 3,000 tickets in the first four hours they were available. Marlins tickets range from $12 to over $300, with many of them under $25.

"We are not misleading anybody, no one is buying a ticket thinking they are going to the game," Samson said. "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."

Halladay, who was in Atlanta for the Phillies' series with the Braves, smiled when asked about Florida's ticket-selling plan.

"It's crazy," the right-hander said, adding that he didn't plan to buy any for himself.

The Marlins are currently last in the National League in attendance, averaging 16,764 a game. They only draw more than Toronto and Cleveland in the majors.

"I certainly would not have expected that a team doing it's job -- we are a team with a low revenue ... trying to raise revenue, I would not have expected this to get any attention," Samson said.

The tickets will remain on sale until the end of the season. The Chicago White Sox sold souvenir tickets to Mark Buehrle's perfect game after he pitched one at home last July, though the souvenir stubs did not count in the attendance figure.

"If you're a Phillie fan, you're probably going to appreciate it. It's a neat little trinket," fan Danny Prenat said at Tuesday night's Milwaukee-Marlins game. "But if you're from Miami, it's not going to have the same value."

Said Samson: "It's history. I don't want to reiterate this too many times -- 20 perfect games in the history of the game."

Samson said he didn't see this as the Marlins profiteering at the expense of Halladay doing well against them,

"As opposed to when teams set their prices and do platinum, gold, silver and bronze games or tier one, two and three depending on their opponents," Samson said. "It's baseball history, we don't look at it that way. We're just selling tickets."

[Associated Press]

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