Port Delays May Deny World Series’ Fans Free ‘Memorable Moments’

Wednesday is camera night at the World Series. There’s just one problem: The 57,000 disposable cameras meant to be handed to fans at Game 4 in San Francisco, with “World Series 2002” stamped into every frame, are stuck on a container ship outside the Port of Los Angeles.

Unless Mitch Tendler comes up with an angel of his own, he said it means a loss of nearly $250,000 to his Chatsworth-based company, Greeting Camera.

After a month of slowdowns and lockouts, ports along the entire West Coast are jammed with backlogged vessels -- more than 100 outside the Los Angeles-Long Beach complex alone.

Each ship holds thousands of containers, and every container has some sort of story to tell. But it’s hard to imagine one that measures up to Tendler’s in pure frustration.

“I know where they are,” he said. “They’re in a container at the top level of a ship called the Mercator. It arrived on the 15th, but things are moving so slow they tell us they won’t have it unloaded until the first of November.”

Which, obviously, is almost two weeks too late.

Tendler has tried calling in old favors, begging and offering free tickets to the series in hopes of getting the container off the NYK Line ship. “We’ve even looked at getting someone to go out there and pull it out, but there’s no way.”

Tendler, who sells promotional cameras to clients from theme parks to drug firms, won the World Series deal from Pro Specialties Group of San Diego, which has an agreement with Major League Baseball to distribute the cameras. The order was too large to fill from his Los Angeles factory, so he sent a rush order to a partner in Hong Kong.

At the time, contract negotiations between the International Longshore and Warehouse Union and the Pacific Maritime Assn., representing cargo carriers, were tense but civil. “Everybody told us [a labor disruption] would be a short thing. If it happened, the president would intervene. We figured we’d have a 10-day cushion. We thought that would be enough.”

The camera giveaway is tied to a season-long campaign sponsored by MasterCard for fans to choose baseball’s greatest moment. Each photo taken with the cameras will bear the credit card company’s logo, along with the phrase “Memorable Moments, World Series 2002.”

Tendler hopes MasterCard might be willing to distribute the cameras later, giving the merchandise to fans in exchange for ticket stubs. MasterCard executives could not be reached for comment late Monday.

The longshore union and the Pacific Maritime Assn. have been at odds over the introduction of labor-saving technology. Federal mediator Peter J. Hurtgen toured the ports of Los Angeles and Long Beach on Monday and is scheduled to resume talks with both sides Wednesday.