Brewers Timeless Ticket flap is bad World Series juju

Milwaukee is about to host a World Series against the Rays, and the main topic in town isn't the rotation. It's a $1,000 promo from 11 years ago.

Barstool Sports

@barstoolsports

Milwaukee doesn’t need any bad juju right now @DKSports #DKPartner

Here's the deal. In 2015 the Brewers sold 1,000 Timeless Tickets at $1,000 apiece, and each one could be redeemed for any future home game, World Series included. The fine print promised the best available seats at the time of redemption. When holders finally went to cash them in for the Fall Classic, they say they were offered terrace-level seats or standing room only, priced at or below the $1,000 they paid back in 2015. People held these things for 11 years waiting for exactly this moment, and the team handed them nosebleeds. You can see why they were mad.

The Brewers backed down pretty fast. Rick Schlesinger, the team's president of business operations, put out a statement saying 'we regret our mistake,' and fans who took the worse seats will still go to the World Series and get to keep their Timeless Ticket for a game in some future season. That probably settles the PR problem. Whether it settles the karma problem is a separate question. If you believe in this stuff, you don't burn 1,000 of your most loyal fans a week before the biggest series in franchise history.

The stakes are big because Milwaukee has never won it all, which came up on the Yak earlier this month during a run through every franchise still waiting. The same conversation drifted into whether the ring is even the point.

Barstool Yak

@BarstoolYak

“I think we overvalue championships and undervalue just being exciting and in it. The ride.”

0:45

Macrodosing took that idea about as far as it goes. Arian Foster announced on the pod that he was picking a baseball team and landed on the Brewers, partly because of the ball-and-glove logo. Since then he's been all in and even threw out a ceremonial first pitch at American Family Field. Now his new team might win a title before he's had to suffer for one, and the hosts argued about whether that's actually bad for him.

Macrodosing

@MacrodosingPod

Would the Brewers winning the World Series this soon into Arian's Brewers fandom be bad for him?

It's a fun argument, but nobody in Milwaukee would turn down a ring because a new fan didn't earn it. The Brewers did the right thing on the Timeless Tickets, even if it took some bad press to get there. Game 1 is Friday, and the 1,000 people who paid in 2015 will be in the building one way or another. If Milwaukee finally wins one, Arian gets the easiest title of any fan alive. If they lose, the Timeless Ticket crowd will be sure the juju got them.