All-Star Game Warnings : Con Artists, Scalpers Are Told: ‘Yer Out’

Ticket scalpers and peddlers of pirated baseball souvenirs beware: Anaheim police and Major League Baseball will play hardball at the July 11 All Star game.

“Do not come to Anaheim,” Police Chief Joseph Malloy warned profiteers during a press conference Wednesday at Anaheim Stadium, site of the 60th All Star contest next week. “Not only will your goods be taken from you, (but) you will be subject to arrest.”

The sellout game, which is expected to attract thousands of out-of-town fans, is also likely to lure characters not in keeping with the All-American image of baseball, authorities predicted. Hard-to-get tickets with a face value of $40 and $50 are already being sold through scalpers for $750 and more, and officials moved this week to head off any illegal sales of tickets and souvenirs.

In California, it is legal to offer tickets at inflated prices but illegal to sell them--even at face value--on stadium grounds.

The offensive on illegal ticket-scalping and counterfeit merchandise sales--both misdemeanors--will include plainclothes police and baseball security officers stationed at the ballpark and local tourist hotels, officials said. Police will also set up a command post at the Anaheim Hilton Hotel.

Such illegal sales are always a problem, but authorities are seeking to prevent a black market boom in anticipation of the game, which will give Anaheim and the host Angels a national spotlight. Acknowledging that police can do little to prevent ticket sales through agencies or newspaper ads, Malloy said the scalper crackdown will concentrate on illegal sales on the ballpark grounds.

“On game day, the (illegal sales) action is right in front of the stadium,” Malloy said. “We’ll be there and anywhere else that fans congregate.”

Souvenir counterfeiters who cut in on sales of officially sanctioned baseball goods net an estimated $1 million annually, but a recent nationwide crackdown has made the practice more risky, according to Tom Ostertag, director of legal affairs for Major League Baseball. More than 250 individuals have been prosecuted for selling counterfeit souvenirs in the last three years, and a Long Island manufacturer was recently shut down for producing trademark goods without authorization, he said.

Holding up a tie-dyed counterfeit T-shirt with a koala bear in a catcher’s mask under a Dodgers logo, Ostertag warned of the “junk merchandise” that souvenir pirates foist off on unwary consumers. Counterfeit goods such as a San Diego Padres cap bearing a skewed team logo and shirts that lose their markings after a single washing also have been confiscated in recent sweeps.

The quality of such goods is often poor, and manufacturers generally use copyrighted logos of the 26 major league teams without authorization.

Major League Baseball oversees quality and design of official goods and is paid a royalty of 8.5% of the sales price. More than 300 manufacturers are licensed to produce caps, T-shirts and baseball novelties in a retail trade that has grown from $220 million in 1987 to a projected $800 million in 1989. Official goods all bear a red, white and blue tag with a batter in silhouette--the Major League Baseball trademark.

“The only way for fans to know they are getting the real thing is to look for the tag,” Ostertag said. NO SISSY STUFF

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