SNY: Megdal: Why jerseys don’t sell

For years...I took offense to the jersey, Schmelz.

The jersey doesn’t provide much enthusiasm about the present, either. This does speak more specifically to the team’s current circumstances. Fans are justifiably skeptical about the 2010 team right now, but this doesn’t mean they aren’t excited about individual players. David Wright, Carlos Beltran, Jose Reyes, Johan Santana are all players whom fans are eager to see perform next year—even more so after seeing less of them than they wanted to in 2009.

But if Mets fans were compelled to buy jerseys for any of them, they’d have already bought them. And it is hard to know how much to celebrate 2010 in advance. After all, these are the same consumers who may have prematurely celebrated 2007 with an NL East Champions shirt, 2008 for the final year at Shea or 2009 for the debut of Citi Field. As much as each of the latter two will provide some positive memories, I can’t imagine anyone wants to evoke either season when wearing a jersey to the ballpark. So to wait and see what 2010 will mean after the fact makes a lot of sense to me.