What: Leafletting outside Citi Field to let fans know that baseball teams like the Mets with home stadiums that use Aramark, on average, have worse luck than teams with home stadiums that do not use Aramark.

Who: Twenty members and staff from Workers United

When: Friday, September 4, 2009 at 7:10 p.m.

Where: Outside of Citi Field

Background: As playoff races heat up across Major League Baseball, superstitious fans and statisticians may want to include one more factor when trying to guess which team will come out on top: What concessionaire is selling hot dogs at the ballpark? According to a look at the numbers by Workers United, baseball teams with home stadiums that use Aramark to sell beer, hotdogs and other ballpark snacks, get caught stealing bases more, hit fewer home runs and have worse “luck”.

 “I’ve always heard that Wade Boggs used to eat chicken before each game for good luck,” said Brian Callaci, researcher with Workers United. “Perhaps luck-obsessed players today should look into which company is selling chicken to fans at their ballpark.”

The experts at www.baseball-reference.com track a statistic called Pythagorean Win-Loss, the expected win-loss record based on the number of runs scored and allowed by the team. They also track Pythagorean Luck, the difference between the actual win-loss and the Pythagorean win-loss. A lucky team is a team with a Pythagorean Luck score higher than 0. That means the team wins more games than it should based on the number of runs it scores and gives up. An unlucky team is a team with a Pythagorean Luck score lower than 0. That, of course, means that the team wins fewer games than it should based on the number of runs it scores and gives up.

In a comparison between teams with home stadiums that use Aramark and teams with home stadiums that do not, Workers United found that non-Aramark teams’ average luck is .40 and Aramark teams’ average luck is -1.93.

As of September 3, the Mets’ luck score was -1.

The teams whose ballparks use Aramark are: the Los Angeles Angels of Anaheim, Houston Astros, Oakland Athletics, Toronto Blue Jays, Atlanta Braves, New York Mets, Washington Nationals, Baltimore Orioles, Philadelphia Phillies, Pittsburgh Pirates, Boston Red Sox, Colorado Rockies, Kansas City Royals, and Minnesota Twins.

Although several of these teams have a good shot at getting to the playoffs, their luck has been down.

To check out the data, go to: http://www.baseball-reference.com/leagues/MLB/2009-standings.shtml

No Luck at Work

“We don’t know that Aramark causes bad luck,” said Callaci. “But we do think that Aramark workers are unlucky to have an employer that is so cavalier about violating workers’ rights.”

At baseball stadiums and other job sites across North America, Aramark is violating the law and disregarding workers’ rights. For example, food service employees at Fenway Park in Boston won a $1.5 million dollar settlement of a class action lawsuit this July that accused Aramark of pocketing their tips and service charges. Elsewhere, Aramark is unlawfully withholding workers’ union dues at Rogers Centre in Toronto, Citizen’s Bank Park in Philadelphia, PNC Park in Pittsburgh, and Coors Field in Colorado.

To read the full press release, click below:

http://workersunitedunion.org/content/superstitious-fans-wonder-ballpark-concessionaire-aramark-bad-baseball-teams

Aramark is the third largest food service provider in the world and the second largest uniform provider in the US. It employs thousands of workers across the U.S. and provides services to a wide base of customers including baseball stadiums, universities, and city, county, and state governments.

Workers United, SEIU is a union of 150,000 workers in the US and Canada who work in the food service, laundry, hospitality, gaming, apparel, textile, manufacturing and distribution industries. www.workersunitedunion.org

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I left my office on W.Broadway at 4PM to go to the game last night. I grabbed an uptown 2 train to Times Square and jumped on the 7 which just happened to be an express and I arrived at $iti Field by 4:45. To my surprise the gates at the O’Malley Shrine were opened and fans were filing in. I went down the left field line to watch BP after awhile I moseyed around the park, grabbed a hot dog (I swear Nathan’s makes two different brands of hot dogs, one for Coney Island and the other for general distribution as the Coney Island dogs are superior to the any other Nathan’s dogs off site. I swear on Coney Island they boiler the hot dogs in ocean water before grilling them) walked a little more, looked at sites, listened to the sounds and all of a sudden I saw a commotion in front of the Mets dugout. There with microphones, cameras and note pads was the CEO of the New York Mets, Jeffery S. Skill Sets holding court and me just 20 rows and a security guard away from my ultimate goal to heckle Jeffey. Now I knew there was no way in hell I was getting down there not with James from Woodside (that’s what it said on his badge) guarding the section.

So I had to wait until I go home from the game to hear what Jeffey had to say (just as well I didn’t get down to the dugout, who wants to get tossed out the ball park before a game and on your birthday no less) but from listening it seems that Omar acted out of frustration against Adam Rubin and what I found interesting was that Jeffey who usually calls his daddy and uncle by their first names, keeping it business like, said that Monday was an “embarrassment to him his father and his uncle” WOW this is personal. Omar’s in trouble here and it will take some big time fence mending with the Skill Sets and the press to save him. He better hope this on field resurgence continues as he is on thin ice and the temperature is getting hotter by the second.

This is where Minaya made his biggest mistake he made this personal and not business. His buddy got caught doing some nasty shit and Adam Rubin reported the facts and Omar got caught covering up Tony B’s transgressions. Omar wanted his pound of flesh and made himself into an ass doing it. Let’s see if he can recover from this.

We may not have won the league title but everyone from the umpires to the coaches and players to the parents hold my kids in high regard and that’s more than enough for me.

I don’t even want to dwell on the rest of the Tony B news or the way the Mets handled the Sheffield DL fiasco I’m in too good a mood for Mets negativity. The sun is shining and it’s warm out so I’m going to play Wiffle play in my yard with my kids. Baseball like it ought to be!!!!

To make matters worse my son and four other boys from our troop spent the night in the woods about 5 miles from our camp to fullfill thier wilderness survival reqs for a merit badge. The boys go into the woods for a night with just a sleeping bag, knife, water, mat, and two hot dogs and an apple. When they returned to camp this moring around 6 AM my son informed me that he saw a bear near their shelter but he was scared off by the noise.

With all that I’m ready to go home and get some concrete under my feet by the way Jerry Manuel needs to play Daniel Murphy every day and Omar needs to give Livan Hernandez his release, and Jeffey and Freddie Skill Sets need to come out hiding and speak to the fan base on how they are going to get this franchise back on track not for this season but for 2010 and beyond.

Time for everyone in the Mets organization to man up and realize this season is done and work on dealing off guys like Ryan Church, Garry Sheffield, Brian Schineder  and Fernando Tatis to name four.

It would be nice if someone in the Mets organization had the guts of a 13 year old Boy Scout