Great American Ball Park is coming. Hang on to your wallets.

        Last year, the Reds announced that 300 “premium” seats would be offered at GABP in the first eight rows behind home plate for a mere $175 a night. They called them Diamond Seats, possibly because if you're not rattling around in 24 karats, you can't afford them.

        Now, the team is running a campaign for the 800 seats behind the Diamonds. Scout Seats will go for $80 each. They sell those spaces at Cinergy Field now, for $28. They're called “Blue Seats.”

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Great American Ball Park is starting to rise on the riverfront. (Ernest Coleman photo) 600 | 800 | 1024

        For $80, you'll sit with the scouts. That's the come-on.

        Really?

        For 80 bucks, you should be a scout. They should hand you your own radar gun. Af
ter the game, you should be escorted to Jim Bowden's office to recommend trades.

        Eighty dollars for one baseball game. That's extraordinary. Tell me there's a Beatles reunion at shortstop after the game. Tell me Mays is 25 and playing center. Tell me Koufax is pitching. Tell me something. Because at $80 a game (nine bucks an inning, 27 bucks an hour and $1.48 an out) I'm scouting for something else to do with my entertainment wad if baseball is all you're giving me.

        This is no indictment of the Reds. Not specifically. They're just doing what everyone else does. If the Seattle Mariners could charge between $125 and $225 a game for similar seats last season — Junior-less and Big Unit-lorn — the Reds can ask $80, or even $175.

        Someone has to pay for A-Rod.

Join the club

        In Houston, they want $200 for a first-class seat, and they don't ply you with free food and drink the way the Reds will. It costs $55 for a field box at Fenway Park, where the bathrooms are medieval.

Workers started planting concrete columns last month. (AP photo) | ZOOM |

        But here's the thing: The average fan is already obsolete at an NBA game. In the NFL, he's playing defense on his own 1-yard line. Baseball, at least in Cincinnati, remained an affordable proposition.

        What if you're Average Family of Four, and you wanna be a scout?

        What do you do if you don't have a title in front of your name or a company giving you tickets? If you're not a senior vice president, do you pawn things?

        We're sitting in the Scout Seats tonight, Ethel. Sell Timmy.

        Where's the line between expensive and extortionary? An $80 baseball ticket sends the sensibility meter deep into the red zone. It's going, going, gone.

Allen's thought

        Reds chief operating officer John Allen said only 8 percent of GABP's seats will be “premium.” His goal is to keep the outfield bleacher seats “around $5.”

The new, the old and the future of Cincinnati stadiums. (Ernest Coleman photo) | ZOOM |

        “We've got to keep it affordable,” Allen said. The Reds won't require seat licenses, either, the way the San Francisco Giants did. That's good. But this isn't San Francisco.

        This is where Everyguy can leave his house at 6:30 for a 7:05 game, pay $5 for a Top Six ticket, then move down 20 rows after the third inning. In 2003, those nights will be as rare as twinight doubleheaders.

        Jenny Gardner, Reds director of new stadium development, said response to the premium seats has been “very good so far. The public has been pretty accepting.”

        Well, fine. I'd like to meet that portion of the public willing to part with $80 or $175 for one game. I've got some checks they can write.

        E-mail: pdaugherty@enquirer.com. Past columns at Enquirer.com/columns/daugherty.

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