Baseball Tickets Are Actually Being Sold in Time of COVID-19 Pandemic

The Class-A Stockton Ports, an Oakland A's minor league team, have sold a few undated tickets good for this year or next to fans who just want to buy a ticket to a baseball game in a time when games are not being played.

The one thing we thought we knew about baseball in this time of COVID-19 coronavirus is that no one is selling tickets to games.

There are no games, after all. All the ticketing operations departments have had to do is deal with giving refunds.

But there are people out there who have to have that ticket in their hand, schedule be damned.

In the middle of what Stockton Ports general manager Pat Filippone calls “the craziest year” in his 30 years of baseball, he says his club has actually sold a few 2020 tickets.

There have been fans of the Ports, the Oakland A’s Class-A franchise in the California League, who just want a ticket to a game, never mind the fact that there is no guarantee of minor league baseball being played this season.

“There have been ticket requests,” Filippone said. “We explain that we are in a postponed status, that we don’t know when there will be games. But there have been some people who have wanted tickets, so we’ve sold a few undated tickets, tickets good for this year or next year.”

Mind you, Filippone and the Ports are not marketing ticket sales, but are doing this more as civic engagement. “We only do it if they come to us,” he said.

The Ports have been a staple of Stockton, which sits about 70 miles east of Oakland, since 1941 except when the Cal League shut down in World War II and for a five-year stretch in the mid-1970s.

“I think we are visible and highly integrated into the community,” Filippone said. “And even though there’s no baseball now, we’re continuing to do that. We are all doing the best we can.”

Even before the eruption of the COVID-19 pandemic, this was going to be a strange year in the minor leagues. Major League Baseball has been looking to trim the 160 minor league franchises by about one quarter, giving MLB greater control over the minor league system.

The Ports have won 11 California League championships, tied for most in league history. About half of the A's 40-man roster has spent time with the Ports, including All-Stars Matt Olson and Matt Chapman and three-fifths of the starting rotation - Sean Manaea, Jesus Luzardo and A.J. Puk.

Given its history – the Ports were known as the Mudville Nine after the Ernest Thayer poem for a couple of years a couple of decades ago – and a nice home – the Banner Island Ballpark, built in 2005 and with a new video board ready to debut – the Ports would seem to have a secure future, but no one knows for sure.

That’s long-term. Short-term, 2020 is problematic. Filippone and the other three fulltime staff members rotate coming into the office, everybody working at home at least two days a week, although Filippone laughs and says “I’m not built to or designed for working from home.”

And the Ports' family has had very personal COVID-19 stories on their minds. Webster Garrison, who managed the Ports last year, has spent almost two months in a Louisiana hospital fighting COVID-19. He has been off a ventilator for more than a month, and while he continues to improve, he remains hospitalized.

“Too much remains up in the air; this is a sensitive time for people,” Filippone said. “We’ve been touched by Webster Garrison, who was hit by this pretty hard. That got it closer to us. I think about him a lot and hope to talk with him sooner rather than later.”

Follow Athletics insider John Hickey on Twitter: @JHickey3

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