Everyone’s favorite “baseball” team, the Savannah Bananas, announced plans this week to create a “verified secondary ticket marketplace” for their fans. I applaud the effort in trying to curb fraud, though a certain buyer beware might also work; the effort to reduce prices though has got me a bit confused. This is the first time I’ve ever seen a business owner concerned the price of his product is getting too high. That’s the Bananas for ya, I guess.

Trouble is that the face value of these tickets, usually something like 35 dollars, is a pittance compared to what these things are actually worth. (I can vouch for this in every sense of the phrase.) Yeah, it’s not unusual for fans to pay 10 times face value (or more) to see the games… because that’s what the tickets should sell for in the first place. With the new system, apparently, fans can resell “verified, authentic tickets”… at face value.

Why anyone would buy something, then turn around and sell it for the same price is lost on me, though a lot of what goes on with the Bananas is a bit silly.

Perhaps now I can add to the list make sure no one pays fair-market value to see our games.

If the owners of the Bananas were concerned only with the price fans paid to see their games they could establish various non-monetary hurdles and cockamamie rules like only people legally named Hiram can apply for tickets or strap a frozen turkey to your head and keep it there if you want to see the game. They’re good at coming up with silly ideas so I’ll let them handle this one.

Funny things happen when you try to pervert the free market, and I’ll be interested to see this one play out. The invisible hand does a marvelous job of these things, and doesn’t require Hirams or frozen turkeys. Just this thing called money.

This country has a long history of attempted market perversion gone wrong (Prohibition comes to mind), but if anyone can do it…

I suppose the Bananas can.