As some of you who've followed me know the Tennessee Smokies (Cubs AA affiliate here) had their last games in Sevier County's stadium right off I-40 this last fall, moving to a newly-built stadium in Knoxville.  The irony is that the club used to be in Knoxville before moving here.

Being that I used to go somewhat regularly and often bought my tickets online an hour or two before the game, and they were very nicely priced (as was the beer and parking) they've been spamming me with season ticket solicitations.  Naw, but what I was very interested in was their single-game pricing -- which they had not yet disclosed.

Until now, with a "flash sale" they sent me Sunday morning.

Its double -- literally -- what it was at the other park.

Best of luck to the Smokies at that price.

You priced yourself out for me, and there's no way to come back from it when you insult someone who's really liked you folks, and spent money and evenings in your ballpark, when you do something like that -- especially when you're all gushing about how "its good for the team and the local business environment."  There wasn't anything wrong with the existing park, by the way -- it was extremely friendly, the sightlines were excellent and there was literally not a single bad seat in the place.

I'm sure its good for the construction company, the condo/apartment place going up right there, and similar.  However, in addition Knoxville has doubled street parking "meter" prices, removed all free street parking in the general vicinity (including during times there is no game, like this last weekend), and then to make it worse also has removed physical meters with the capacity to accept quarters or a card at said meter, so now you must use their "app vendor" on your phone which surcharges your parking by a dollar a crack on top of per-hour price doubling.  Thus for an hour-long period of time your cost has basically tripled to park on the street funneling some of the money to their "preferred" private vendor who they gave the street parking contract to on top of it.

I hope Knoxville and all the eateries and bars in the vicinity love what that does to all the nice places I used to go and spend money at in Old City, especially during the week when they typically ran "happy hour" deals -- which has now gone to zero for me as well since the formerly-available option to park for free is now limited to the two lots behind Mill and Mine under I-40 which are a half-mile or so walk to said establishments -- and who knows how long that will persist before the city decides to put those on the mandatory "you must pay through our preferred vendor and let them******you" game as well should you choose not to park on the street.  It won't kill my weekend visits to a couple of my favored downtown establishments at this point because, at least so far, the city lots remain free to park in on weekends.

Perhaps the people of Knoxville will actually flock to a ball game at double the price it used to be 15 minutes up the road (or perhaps none of them have cars and thus now will go where before they would not) and perhaps all those who don't live within walking distance will not care about the screwing they take with the parking situation.  I'm sure the beer at said stadium is likewise double the price but I'll never find out by stepping foot in there, never mind the impossibility of a reasonable parking option -- where it was $5 at the old stadium and no shortage of spaces to park right there at the stadium, ever, even during major busy games where they were nicely filled which did occasionally occur.

Someone's gotta pay for that nice shiny new stadium "development" -- but it won't be me, and unfortunately since the local businesses either didn't oppose this or failed to put a stop the collateral screwing of anyone coming into that general part of the city by car I won't be visiting them  and spending money there nearly as often either.