[M2]

tr, the simple response from anyone with a professional bone in their body to the scenario you laid out should have been, "That's all well and good, but it's 2004 and I think we have to assume people know that."

It makes it look like the team's doing things on the cheap, probably because it is. You've seen in this thread that cutting corners on something like this makes people wonder about the freshness of the food at the concessions and whether other money-saving measures might not lead to funky restrooms.

The team botched a ballpark project -- lowest first season attendance of any new park, payroll immediately falls back to pre-2003 levels. On top of that, the team botches the basics of pubic relations, marketing and customer care on a regular basis. Fans booed the team owner yesterday with the Vice President sitting next to him and we're not talking about Philadelphians here. If the Reds were a public company, would you sink your hard-earned money into them and expect any kind of return?

Even if you look past the "whatever" attitude toward details, if the team can't get a simple cup promotion right what hope is there that they'll score a significantly better television contract or launch a successful market expansion?

Kitty, my point is that if they had four collector's cups to issue in 2003, then certainly by September they should have swapped out models 1-3 for model #4 if they thought it was important to get them into the hands of their fans.