Cheap Seats Are the Best--for Losers

Everybody seems to be encouraging me to do a slash job on Los Angeles hockey boss Bruce McNall, just because the only people who can afford good seats to see his Kings are the people who also happen to live like one.

But I refuse.

McNall forks over $15 million in cash to procure Wayne Gretzky, on top of which he has to take over the payments on Gretzky’s gigantic salary, but now we are supposed to resent the fact that he is selling tickets at unreasonable prices.

Do you want Gretzky and the best hockey money can buy or don’t you? Make up your minds.

You can’t have it both ways.

McNall may be a multimillionaire, but that doesn’t mean he runs a nonprofit organization. He is not some bottomless well. He is Daddy Puckbucks, yes, and he owns thoroughbreds and jet planes and rare coins, yes, but the man did not buy a hockey team just to see how much money he could lose.

It’s a business, not a charity ward. Why should anybody begrudge the Kings--or the Lakers, for that matter--charging what the traffic allows? Why should they charge $10 for rinkside tickets if somebody is willing to pay $200?

What is this “loyalty� nonsense? Where do people get the idea that sports enterprises needn’t function like any other commercial merchants, just because the customers cheer aloud? Should a furrier or grocer or car dealer keep charging 1950 or 1970 prices, out of regard for longtime customers?

Say you ran a business. You sell fruit. An apple’s a nickel. A guy hands you a nickel. You hand him your last apple.

The next guy says: “I’d have given you a quarter for that apple.�

Five hungry guys behind him say: “So would I.�

Next day, would each of your apples still cost a nickel?

I know people want the well-off to make sacrifices. They want Peter O’Malley to sign Darryl Strawberry for however much money it takes. They don’t care that O’Malley has absolutely no guarantee that Strawberry won’t come to the Dodgers and hit .220. It’s not their dough. They simply like the Dodgers. They think it would be peachy to see Darryl Strawberry.

Same with King fans. They want Gretzky. They want a winner. They are tired of the Kings being losers. But they stop coming when the Kings start losing. And they don’t want to pay extra to help the Kings start winning.

I don’t know if I have ever seen the owner of a sports franchise achieve popularity any faster than McNall did when he took over the Kings. Not that Jerry Buss was held in low esteem. It’s just that McNall seemed more of a fan’s man, a free-thinker and free-spender, committed to success at any cost, willing to do whatever it took to acquire the greatest player in the game.

Jerry Buss didn’t have to do that. In basketball, he already had the greatest player in the game. Best team, too.

McNall takes a certain pride in sitting in the colonnade seats at the Forum. When fans claimed that they were being phased out of the better seats because of escalating prices, McNall asked: “Does loyalty only mean (a fan) must sit in loge seats? Is there anything wrong with the colonnade seats? I sit in the colonnade.�

He also said that by milking buckets of bucks from golden-calf celebrities such as Sylvester Stallone and other zillionaires for the best seats in the house, he was able to hold the line on ticket prices elsewhere, or at least as much as possible.

The fact that McNall’s comments did not cause more of a stir can be attributed mostly to the fact that this is Los Angeles, not New York. Were it New York, this newspaper would have splashed it on Page 1 in 10-inch-tall headlines, rather than soft-pedaling it, which is precisely what happened here. Boss Bruce would have come across like Boss Steinbrenner.

Fans would have asked: How many savings accounts and checking accounts does it require to be able to afford to buy tickets to a game at the Great Western Forum?

Fans would have said: Prices being what they are, the Forum now has three designated seating areas: Colonnade, Loge and Megabuck.

Well, McNall is not insulting the fans. He did not say: “Let them eat cake.� He is doing business, best he knows how.

What he said could have been worded better, since, after all, Bruce McNall sits in the colonnade by choice , not because he must. It also seems unseemly because, while the Dodgers and Angels also recently raised ticket prices, they do not yet--as far as we know--charge a King’s ransom for the best seats, or a Laker’s ransom, either.

I also must admit that I don’t know exactly how Stallone feels about what he pays.

But I don’t hope he gets struck in the head by a puck or anything. And I don’t think McNall has done one single thing to be ashamed of.

Just because you want to see the Kings win does not mean you have to sit up close.