Wish You Were There? Now You Can Say You Were

The Florida Marlins haven’t really been a franchise on the cutting edge, unless you define ‘cutting edge’ as dismantling World Series championship teams in record time, not fact-checking the relative Judaism of their first basemen, or having their mascot spray unsuspecting tourists with a water gun. However, today the Marlins have done something truly innovative. Thanks to their groundbreaking procedure of selling tickets to games that already happened, each purchaser is guaranteed a ticket to a historic event.

Florida Marlins management has decided to sell unused tickets from last Saturday’s game against the Phillies; the game in which Roy Halladay pitched a perfect game. This way, just like with Lebron James, “we are all witnesses.”

The Marlins drew a crowd of about 25,000 spectators for Saturday’s game, leaving tens of thousands of unsold tickets to be sold off as souvenirs. The Marlins will make the tickets available today, Tuesday June 1st, online, and at the box office in south Florida, and are being sold at face value. It is certainly an imaginative money-making scheme for the perennially cash-strapped franchise, and it will be interesting to see how well these ticket stubs sell, both from the Marlins themselves, and on the secondary market.

I guess if you can’t go back in time and actually attend the game, the Marlins are offering the next best thing. The beauty of sports is the ever-present possibility of history to made. When you purchase a ticket to a sporting event you’re buying more than an afternoon or evening of entertainment, you are accepting an invitation to a world of infinite potential, where, as the N.B.A. has so frequently reminded us, “amazing happens.” When buying a ticket to Halladay’s perfect game, you’re buying a reminder of the excitement each game possesses, and of which you, despite your ticket stub, were not a part.

If you prefer purchasing tickets to games that haven’t already taken place, check out SeatGeek’s Marlins and Phillies pages for the best deals anywhere.