The World Series and You



In New York, it isn't so much how big a fan of the Yankees you are, it's who you know that counts. As anyone following the Series knows, there were two ways for non-season ticketholders to see Game One in person on Saturday: camp out in line for the chance to get tickets, or know someone (perhaps yourself) who works for a corporation that bought obscene numbers of passes. The latter is a much easier path.

Jenny and I chose the former course as we try to do things as painfully as possible. So, Wednesday night around 10:00, three days before Game One, we took the 4 train to Yankee Stadium in order to wait with several thousand of our closest friends to each get a numbered wristband. Most of the people in our little pen (set up by the NYPD to minimize crowding and jockeying in the line) were nice enough, though that damn rap song using the "It's a Hard Knock Life" sample has to go. NOW.

Without going into too much detail, this system works better than the 1996 version of first-come first-served for two reasons. One, it allows those of us with paying jobs to get a chance to wait on line without being fired for missing several days of work. Two, scalpers are a little more pressed for tickets: in the past they might have had to pay no more than a few bottles of wine to get homeless folks to sleep in line at the stadium rather than perhaps a few blocks away where they normally did, get many tickets with the scalper's money, and be on their way. Now, with a two ticket limit and no assurances of line placement granting prime Stadium real estate, scalpers would have to pay more to get the good seats. The wristbands were numbered from 5000 to 9999, randomly. To illustrate, I received wristband 7154 while Jenny got 7740 or so, standing next to each other in line.

We went home to return by 12:30 to learn which wristband number would be considered the line's starting point. This randomness proved irritating only because it didn't work for us. We both camped out because we were trying to secure tickets not only for us but my two brothers. Whatever the case, they drew number 7427 -- perfect positioning for Jenny, but awful for me. WHen they lined us up in order shortly thereafter, Jenny was, of course, three pens from the very front, while I was back past 151st Street, across from the Bronx Correctional Facility.

To cut the story short, she got us two tickets, Section 10, Tier Reserve -- the best seats next to each other at that point. I told you the corporations took a lot of seating. She was done a little after 2:00, and came to show me the pretty tickets and those unfortunate souls in my 7100-7199 pen oohed and aahed over them and she left. I made it to the home stretch of the procession by a little after 6:00 (five hours in line) -- and we stopped cold. After a two hour wait doing pretty much nothing, the police announced around 8 that there were no more tickets, sorry, have a good night. A very brief ruckus ensued, although nobody blamed the police for our ticketless position.

So we went to the game by ourselves. What a game! I'll write my thoughts on the game, the crowd, and the San Diego fans here.


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