I had my first experience as a Guardians’ season ticket holder last year, and I’d like to share some reactions and thoughts.
First of all, some background on me: I had been buying a six-pack of Guardians
tickets since the team started offering those and this was the first year I branched out to a 20-game package, taking 10 games for me and inviting two friends to be part of my group, each of whom got 5 games. One of my friends became busy in September, so I ended up selling tickets for two games that I could not attend. I am a father of four kids ages 6, 5, 2 and 1 for most of this season. My wife is not an active baseball fan, so I brought one of my oldest three children with me to each game I attended until the last game of the year where I convinced my wife to go on a date-night of sorts with me to the final Guardians’ regular season game of the year.
Positives:
-The customer care person who helped me, Steve, was very on-top of things. He communicated with me whenever I had a question immediately and explained things thoroughly. I know I have spoken to some STH’s who complain about customer care reps but I have never had a bad experience with any of these folks with the Guardians over the years and certainly didn’t have one last year. Thanks for being awesome, Steve!
-The staff working the kids’ area are kind and patient with the kids from my experience.
-I know I heard some complaints from STH’s about problems in securing the two STH gifts the team offered – a hat and your choice of a hooded sweatshirt or other clothing items. That wasn’t my experience… when they offered the chance to sign up for the free items or pick them up, I did as instructed and received my items. It took a little longer than I expected for the hoodie to arrive but it did and it’s like my favorite clothing item at the moment. Very comfortable.
-The Ballpark Ticket App crashed on a couple occasions that I know of, but not for me, so I have no criticism there. It’s super easy to forward tickets to folks and also easy to resell them on the affiliated app.
-I really enjoyed the event we attended for season ticket holder appreciation week in July. I was thrilled with our event where we got to meet many Guardians’ players and coaches and I took photos of my oldest son with everyone from Gavin Williams to Carl Willis. You had to choose between 3-4 potential events, which may have bothered some folks but seemed fair to me.
-The food is expensive, of course, but it’s good quality for the most part (I don’t expect the cheapest hot dogs and pretzels to be amazing). There are a lot of good local options and fun menu items at Progressive Field in my humble opinion.
-The in-stadium entertainment is not too obtrusive for people enjoying the game, in my opinion. Listening to Mariners, Blue Jays and Dodgers games this postseason, I was so ANNOYED at how CONSTANT the noise and musical cues were and it makes me appreciate how our crew lets baseball moments breathe and trusts the Guardians’ crowd to know what they need to do when the high leverage points arise.
Negatives:
-The Guardians simply need more staff at their games. The concessions are often drastically under-staffed and the kids areas are only properly staffed from June-August. The rest of the time – when college students are absent – I would describe the kids areas as frighteningly under-staffed. As a parent, this would be the NUMBER one area I’d like to see the team invest some money for improvement. If you go from April-May and in September, they won’t even have simple coloring pages for your kids because they simply don’t have anyone seemingly to run them off the copier and sit at a table with crayons. I am assuming this is because the organization is too cheap to pay people enough to take these jobs. I realize staffing is an issue everywhere, but you’re a professional baseball franchise trying to get families and children invested in this team and this stadium experience. You MUST do better than huge lines at concesssions while other concession stands are shuttered due to lack of staff, and unruly children roaming aimlessly in the kids’ clubhouse area because you’ve only got a handful of folks to supervise the area. Parents need to do a better job watching their kids, but seeing as you can’t change the fact that many are not doing that job well, you’ve got to do what you can to help parents like myself who ARE supervising their kids and trying to give them a good gameday experience.
-I noted that I appreciated the event we attended for season ticket-holder appreciation, but I do think the team needs to do a LOT more to offer season ticket holders and average fans a chance to be invested in the team and its players. Getting rid of GuardsFest remains a ridiculously cheap and short-sighted decision (also, we all know it was made “every three years” because Dolan knows it will be canceled due to the lockout in 2027 and is hoping to just make the event go away for good in that case). You now almost have to be a season ticket-holder to be able to interact with players and coaches who are not as available before games or in the players’ lots after games as they used to be. That’s short-sighted, and I say this as someone who isn’t an autograph hound.
I am not sure why the team doesn’t make offer season ticket holders a chance to choose 2-3 giveaway items each year that they want and either ship those to them or keep them on will-call. I’m not sure why they don’t send a fun care package to STH’s at the beginning of each season with some nice keepsakes and thank you gifts to get the social media clout from STH’s posting their “unboxing” videos. Make it seem like being a STH is something that has a lot of tangible and intangible value by investing just a little more in small tokens of appreciation, and make sure the average fan who doesn’t have the money or time to be a STH still has opportunities to interact personally with coaches and players.
-Very small thing: there are several places throughout the stadium where you can’t see or hear the game if you’re walking around. I think you should be able to either hear or see the game action no matter where you are (unless it is a specificially-designated quiet area for those with sensory issues, of course).
-The team needs to find a way to make absolutely sure Jose Ramirez ends his career only playing baseball for the Guardians. Is this a negative yet? Nope. Could it be the biggest negative PR thing this team has experienced, surpassing even a fairly unpopular name change? Absolutely. Figure out how to keep Jose in a Cleveland uniform until he retires to step into Cooperstown by extending him again AND investing a little more in the team around him to give him a good chance at a title run.
Overall, I really enjoyed being a season ticket holder and renewed for 2026. I am eagerly anticipating when my schedule of games cames out and planning my spring-summer calendar around taking all FOUR of my kids in the year ahead and teaching them to love baseball and the Guardians even more. But, I do hope these few areas where further investment could pay high dividends will come to the attention of some franchise decision-makers and produce some positive change for a fanbase that I do think is one of the best in MLB.
