By Mike McCann

The above ticket is what I received at a Bristol White Sox game.  I know that Bristol is an Appalachian League team which is pretty much the lowest level of the minor leagues.  And the team is owned by the Chicago White Sox who aren't going to allocate much money to this minor league team.  And they average 500 people per game.  But this is ridiculous.

I'm sure that everyone who is reading this visits my webpage regularly.  Well, maybe I'm the only one, but for those who do, you have seen how I scan in tickets from all of the games that I attend.  Personally, I think that it is pretty interesting to look at all of the tickets.  Especially when you go to many different stadiums and can get your hands on many different types of tickets like I can.  To me, there is always some excitement in getting the ticket to a baseball game at a new stadium, just to see what it looks like.

I personally like how well some of them are designed.  Many times, the especially nice looking ones are season tickets for major league games.  But there are a number that have a nice design and/or artwork on them.  I have a ticket from the inaugural game of the Brooklyn Cyclones which looks extremely nice.  It's 3 1/4 inches by 6 1/2 inches and has a drawing of the stadium on it.  The logos of both teams are also printed on the ticket.

There are many others which look kind of plain.  But you would still want to keep it as a souvenir of your baseball game because the ticket is somewhat unique.  This is also assuming that you buy your tickets directly from the team.  Many teams now outsource ticket sales to companies like TicketMaster or tickets.com.  Those tickets are extremely boring unless you like the corporate logo all over your tickets.  I'm still pretty bummed that I had no choice but to get an Aberdeen Ironbirds ticket via this method.  But I guess that is mainly because of the extra charges that are piled on there which I wouldn't have to pay when buying it at a ticket window.

For a while, I always made fun of the Oneonta Tigers ticket.  It is the same size as the Bristol ticket.  And didn't have the date or time or opponent on it.  But at least it said Oneonta Tigers on it (although small).  So you could tell that Oneonta had tickets specially printed for them.  But they didn't have to print separate tickets for each game.  Kingsport does something similar, although they have the team's logo and 2002 season printed on them.

I'm sure many of you can tell similar stories about other places.  But I can really only comment on the places I've seen so far.  And 70 teams is a good sample size, right?  Although I've only been to 2 Appy League stadiums, and no Pioneer League stadiums.  But I think that all teams should at least print their own tickets.  I don't like how the team goes to a local discount store and buys some raffle ticket which they use for admission, even though they do give you different colors for the different sections of seating.  Bristol sells tickets to sit wherever you want (except season ticket holder seats, which are not clearly marked) for the section you bought a ticket for.  In Oneonta, there is only one price of admission, so you can sit anywhere you want (except season ticket holder seats).

So what's the point to all of this?  I just think that people should take notice in the tickets they receive at baseball games.  There are people who collect tickets from different events.  At the Baseball Hall of Fame in Cooperstown, they have a display that shows a ticket from each World Series that was played.  Some people (me) even put them on their wall, in protective sheets, to show all of the different teams they saw.  You can appreciate the uniqueness in the tickets you receive at a baseball game and think of all the great memories that go along with the game that you saw.