Players can leave tickets, but they're far from free

Kevin Russo, the West Babylon native who drove in both runs for the Yankees in Friday's 2-1 Subway Series win over the Mets, was asked in the postgame glow how many tickets he had left at Citi Field for friends and family.

Two, he said. One for his brother and one for his brother's 8-year-old daughter.

Why not more, he was asked?

"I don't know how many tickets I can get," Russo said. "I don't know how it works."

So how does it work?

The image exists of a baseball player leaving tickets - in the old days, "passes" - for friends and family at a will-call window. Or dropping a couple of tickets in place of a tip for a friendly waiter. Or the guy who washes his car. Or the woman he met at a bar.

In reality, players' tickets are highly controlled by the teams, especially since the IRS started cracking down in 2005 on "freebies" given to players and then handed out to family and friends. Free tickets are taxable perks, the IRS declared. Now the players must pay.

"In some ways, that was a good thing," Mets catcher Rod Barajas said. "That made it easier to say no to people."

Each MLB player is entitled to purchase up to six tickets - four "family" tickets and two "friends" tickets - for each game, home and road. Every big-league clubhouse has a computer into which players can input their ticket requests.

"It's a complicated process," Yankees outfielder Brett Gardner said. "They have to be all documented, all under the names they have to go under. You can't just go ahead and say, 'Leave two tickets for so-and-so.' "

Yankees captain Derek Jeter, for example, used the computer in the visiting clubhouse at Citi Field to buy tickets for an undisclosed number of guests before last night's game.

Player tickets are not cheap, especially not for a rookie such as Russo, who is making a pro-rated minimum salary of $400,000 (but only for as long as he stays in the majors).

For last night's Subway Series game, player tickets - the seats are located behind home plate - were going for about $175 a pop. That's more than $1,000 for six.

Jeter, whose salary for this season is $21 million, doesn't have to worry about the cost. But when told the price tag, he said he was surprised and joked, "I'm going to delete some of these tickets I just got."

Jeter said he remembers leaving one ticket for his major-league debut on May 29, 1995, at Seattle's Kingdome. It was for his father, Charles.

But what if a player needs more than six? Barajas, whose family lives in Southern California, said he might need up to 30 per game when the Mets visit the Dodgers in Los Angeles in late July for a four-game series.

Barajas said he plans to barter with his teammates to get the extra ducats. Chances are the other 24 players will have leftover seats they are not buying, so Barajas will be able to buy some of theirs. And when the Mets go to a city in which one of his teammates needs extra tickets, they can buy Barajas'.

"Luckily, I don't think we have too many California boys on this team," Barajas said. "Some of these deals are made in spring training."

Gardner, another low-end earner (by baseball standards) at $452,500, said he could have easily filled "80 to 100" ticket requests when the team played in Atlanta last June. Gardner is from South Carolina.

Instead, he bought the maximum six for each game. So what happened to the rest of his pals who thought they had a friend on the inside?

"If they know me, they know I don't get the tickets for free," Gardner said. "It's probably easier and cheaper for them to get them on the Internet. Maybe StubHub or something."