The Mets Answer Len

Recalling my letter to the Met owner as I included in yesterday's blog entry, my little throwaway line at the end, where I compared the Met customer service unfavorably to the Dodgers, really hit Fred Wilpon in the breadbasket. Next to Bernie Madoff, this might have been his worst moment in the past two years. After all, the guy still probably sleeps with a blow-up doll of Sandy Koufax. For this genius who constructed Citi Field to be all things Ebbets Field, my letter might have been the cowtipper.

About two days after I FedExed my missive to the Mets, I got a voicemail from some woman in the Met organization. She had gotten my note from Fred Wilpon and really wanted to address my concerns. She did not sound like some kid who had majored in sports marketing at Hofstra. This lady came across as the real deal. I was to call at my earliest convenience.

That would be the very next day.

The lady I was calling is big enough that she doesn't answer her own phone. Instead, she has an old-fashioned secretary. One of those gals who's still using carbon paper in her typewriter and undoubtedly smokes two packs of Chesterfields a day. For all I know, I could have been talking to Edna Stengel. I got to know her a bit over the next few days as the Met honcho and I played an extreme game of phone tag, aggravated even more by the bi-coastal time difference.

Finally, on Christmas Eve morning, we connected.

And spoke for an hour. The bigshot lady has been in charge of customer service for the Mets since 1995. But prior to that, and perhaps the very reason why my letter wound up on her desk, she worked here in Los Angeles. For the Dodger ticket office. As a matter of fact, she turns out to be personal friends with my two contacts there. I wanted to go down to Disneyland, get in a boat, and sing "It's A Small World" for an hour. She asked me what my Dodger seat number and aisle was. She immediately recalled that it was in proximity to first base. If this is what super servicing is all about, I wanted to sign up immediately. Was it too late to send her a gift basket for Christmas?

Over the course of the conversation, she addressed all my concerns. The leaky seats. The inability to see anybody in the Met dugout. The reasons why we were dumped unceremoniously into a LaGuardia flight approach. And she listened to me when I talked as well.

Of course, I soon discovered what also triggered this knee-jerk reaction from the Mets. They read and reread the section about my arthritic knee.

All of a sudden, I connected the dots. They were perhaps envisioning a potential law suit on behalf of a handicapped fan. Hmmmm.

I quickly assured her that I was not card-carrying member of "Jerry's Kids." Indeed, I told my new best friend that even friends with damn good knees had issues scaling the steep climb known as Mount Promenade Level. She kept on about getting seats in the handicapped sections. I told her I was not ready for this. By a longshot.

Still, at every turn of our chat, this lady was kind and genuine. She actually cared about my concerns and that is simply all I wanted. We made a phone date to talk again so we can set up a time where my adjacent seat buddies could go and pick out a new location for them and me.

In good faith, I wrote out a check and renewed again for another year with the New York Mets. I needed to do one more season of bi-coastal baseball seat plans like I needed a second navel. But, by simply listening to me and carrying on an adult conversation, this lady had sucked me in one more time.

Meanwhile, my letter apparently is still making the Citi Field rounds like one of my e-mail chains where you have to profess your undying love to ten unsuspecting friends. Yesterday, I fielded a voice mail from an assistant to Fred Wilpon's jerky son, Jeff. I countered with my own voice mail back.

"Thanks for calling me back. But I can only handle one new good friend at a time. See you in April."

Dinner last night: Shrimp and chicken gumbo at the Cheesecake Factory.