StanSpeak: Oh Come All Ye Phaithphul Edition

As GateGate rolls on, Adam Kilgore -- my new personal hero -- hanged Mr. Stanley with his own words. Tacked on to the end of a post, he pasted the transcript of his email conversation with Mr. Kasten, wherein the Supreme Leader (the guy who taught Bobby Cox and Ted Turner everything they know, and who led the Atlanta Hawks to greatness) slaps his dick right in the eye of every Nats fan out there.

The Killer sent Kasten a polite email with about 5 specific, targeted questions. I pumped Kasten's terse reply through the StanSpeak Translator to figure out what the hell he was really thinking, as if it's not obvious from the condescension in his reply (that's probably oozing out from the pixels of your screen).

We sell very few season tickets and book a few tiny groups all winter long, except for opening day when we sell out to large swaths of organized Phillies fans instead of our real fans. For every game of the season, because clearly I'm going to obfuscate and give absolutely no indication that opening day is any different from a Thursday night in April against the Brewers. All of this is before any individual tickets go on sale. Most of our groups to random and unimportant midweek games are local. Some, especially large, organized groups shuttling thousands of fans for big games, are from out of town, and their money spends just the same. Its really that simple. Now be gone with you, you stupid fuck. 

Amazingly that arrogant response didn't satisfy the Killer, so he went back, even pointing out that the Stanley Steamer hadn't actually answered any of the goddamn questions.  So Stanley wrote back.

Again, moron (why won't you throw more softballs like your predecessor?), The ONLY 5,000 or so tickets made available to ANYONE in groups of 25 or more, which should be the typical size of a group of friends who just wanna catch a game, from ANYWHERE near Bucks County before the simpletons we call our fans could purchase tickets via the individual ticket sales date were season tickets (thanks SBF!) or groups. And let's remember that we didn't sell the game out until the day of the game, even though one of my talking points is that we sold it out in 7 minutes.  And even though I'm counting all the tickets we held back until the very last minute, which includes those for season tickets that we couldn't find any suckers to purchase, and those we held for VIPs and opposing teams.  Which is why , FOR EVERY GAME, putz, we hold back 400 tickets at $5 each that can only be purchased day of game.  It has absolutely nothing to do with getting college students in cheaply so they'll have more money to spend on beer.

Killer still wasn't satisfied, so he went back for one more round: "One more question: Is a park with thousands of visiting fans on opening day detrimental to cultivating a long-term, loyal fan base?"  Uhoh.  He dared question the buck-naked Emperor.  

Nice question, prick.  I think the best way to answer your pathetic little question is for you to think (for the first time in your life) about the difference between the crowds  at the meaningless Saturday exhibition and Monday's home opener. Same policies for everything, but for some reason, our efforts to market bus trips to Sunday's game to Philly fans didn't really work.. (And clearly I'm going to lie and say that more Red Sox fans saturday than Philly fans Monday.) But there's no denying there was a tangible qualitative difference in the two crowds, and I'll continue to willfully ignore the difference in meaning to those two games.. I'll let you draw your own conclusions because if I drew them myself honestly I'd come to the opposite conclusion of everything I've just fucking said to you.

Also as anyone who has watched bad teams turn into good teams as I did standing on the sideline while Cox and Schuerholz turned around my Braves team, in any sport, these problems (where I'll pretend we're talking about attendance issues at large, instead of the issue of my own ticket office openly marketing tickets to Philly fans before our own fans)  dissipate as teams improve, as home teams followers get more numerous and more enthusiastic.  In the meantime, Nats fans can go fuck themselves, as long as they're doing it with officially licensed paraphernalia purchased at one of our fine Team Stores.  We don't really need your goddamned money now.  And we know you'll be back once we're good... in 15 years or so.