On Season Ticket Holder Options

Hey Blues, I Don't Want Rivermen Tickets

The Blues would really like to keep your money if you're a season ticketholder of any kind. And if it's with the Blues in St. Louis or in Peoria, Ill., with their farm team, it's the same to them. Let me explain.

Season ticketholders got emails on Monday outlining the refund options the team has established for the lockout. There are four options, three of them involving the team holding onto your money and the Blues giving varying amounts of interest.

If you leave your money with them, you can get 5 percent toward future Blues games or events at their arena or the opera house next door. If you leave your money, you can get 10 percent interest toward Rivermen tickets. Remember, the Blues own the Rivermen. So it's incentive to spend more money with them on their other team. Bothe those options would be for the eternal optimists in the crowd. You love hockey, can't get enough, can't wait to spend money with this franchise. Oh, you'll help me spend my money with you in Central Illinois? Great!

Options three and four involve getting money back. The first is the team holding the money indefinitely and giving 1 percent interest. Or you can get a refund every month for games that get cancelled.

Now, understand there's a fifth option. How about a full refund, up front, right now?

Late in games on the scoreboard, they sometimes play a clip from the movie "Broadcast News." One of the characters is at a news desk. He starts speaking faster as he stands up and he says, "I want you to get up out of your chairs, open the window, stick your head out and yell" and usually the scoreboard says Let's Go Blues. But in the movie, he says, "I'm mad as hell and I'm not going to take this anymore."

So let's try this. Go to your phone, call your ticket representative (if he or she hasn't quit for a more stable job or been laid off) and yell that you're mad as hell and you want a refund for the entire season. You think they're going to try and alienate you further? You think they want to piss you off by demanding they hold your money while the season is in doubt?

Look, if you want to hold out hope for the season, cool. If you want to make sure you're at the first game after the lockout, fine by me. But I'm pissed. I know a lot of people are pissed. The lockout is threatening this league. It's threatening to take away our hobby, our passion, our pastime. I don't want to give the league or any owners any of my money for any longer than I need to.

How about you?