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Temperature-Based Promotion Sends Baseball Ticket Prices To Rock Bottom in Wilmington

By Tim Jimenez

WILMINGTON, Del. (CBS) -- It was a grand slam today for fans of a local minor league baseball team. The frigid blast means opening day tickets were going for mere pennies.

A President's Day promotion for the Wilmington Blue Rocks said that tickets would go on sale at a price based on this morning's outdoor temperature in Wilmington.

So, tickets for their home opener, April 16th, were being sold this morning for a whopping "four cents a piece."

Really?  General manager Chris Kemple says, absolutely.

"(We) put our opening day tickets on sale for the price of what the temperature was at eight o'clock in the morning."

And at that time, it was a blistering 4 degrees F. in Wilmington.

This is the second straight year the team is running this promotion, and it's certainly a hit among fans.  Last year the tickets were priced at 20 cents each.

This morning, Kemple says, as of 9:30am they had sold more than 1,000 opening day passes, some fans even braving the single-digit temperatures to go to the ballpark ticket office in person.

He says they may have to clarify the rules for next year, since this year's frigid temperature caught them a little bit by surprise.

"Zero (degrees) would have been free tickets, and if it was negative degrees I'm not sure what we would have done.  I guess in theory we would have had to give money," he says with a laugh.

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