I Need Two on the Aisle!

How is it that the worse the team whose game you are trying to get tickets for the harder it is to find good seats? Good seat without going through a scalper that is.

By far this is not the first time I’ve railed against scalpers. They are the lowest of the low who put their personal profit over the happiness of a young child getting to see his first ballgame or her first Wiggles concert because you’ve purchased a block of 12 tickets with the express intent of marking them up 150% and pricing out many parents.

I understand that I’m not a parent (unless you count the dog) and I can easily just visit the team’s website and purchase tickets but I know there are those of you out there who are going to get stuck with tickets on your hands and once that first pitch is thrown they are going to be worthless. It’s a kind of cosmic/karmic Montezuma’s Revenge that gets cast on these scum.

But never fear, much like the right reverend Billy Sol Hargus, I am here to heal your pain and grant you forgiveness. Sell me your 2 tickets to Thursday night’s Mets/Orioles game (field box seats) below face value. Sure you may take a $5 loss per seat but you’ll be gaining a warm sense of peace and understanding with the universe.

Final Games, Bleacher Creatures, and the 4-Letter

I know that the final game at Yankee Stadium last night was the lead story of ESPN’s broadcast of the game last night but I want to take issue (surprise surprise) and with a few things.

1) ESPN (main channel) not taking the live coverage of the pre-game events until just before the first pitch. This is just unacceptable. Nobody (and let me repeat this for emphasis) NOBODY cares about the last few NFL wrap up scores. If you really have to show it to honor a contract of sorts, run it on ESPN News or on ESPN Classic, or even on the Ocho. This IS the most important story in sports today and should have superceded anything else. For that matter it probably should have been shown on dare I say it, Fox, so that everybody could see it.

2) The “Rollcall”. There is nobody who doubts that Yankee fans are the among the lowest forms of dirt on earth but those “bleacher creatures” that “live” in the right field bleachers are the lowest of the low. Every home game they issue a rollcall of the starting line up. Following the first pitch of every game they chant the name of each player (beginning with the left fielder) until they respond with a wave or doff of the cap. Well these drunken, knuckle-dragging fools began their chant and got around to right fielder Bobby Abreu. They begin chanting his name (while the pitch is being thrown) and sure enough he has to chase a ball back to the fence. They keep chanting his name while he’s running back to field the ball. Here’s a hint to those dopey fans….stop chanting altogether. The players don’t care. Much of the other mouth-breathers in the stadium don’t care. And most of all your kids don’t care. You are the worst of the worst and the players would try just has hard if those seats were completely empty.

3) One more complaint on ESPN’s coverage. It might have taken the casual fan at least 3 innings of baseball before they knew that the Yankees were actually playing another team and that the team was the Baltimore Orioles (even though the O’s were up 2-0 in the 2nd inning). Again (as noted above) the story here was Yankee Stadium but we could make more then a passing comment about the team from “Charm City”.

Ok on to some compliments:

1) Fans on the field. Yankee management allowed fans to walk the warning track and the foul territory starting at 1pm today. A friend (and frequent NBLAJ commenter) said she was not planning on going to scoop up some warning track dirt or take a small clipping of grass but Bloggerman did not get a chance to reach her by phone to confirm at the time of this printing.

2) Opening Ceremonies. With the exception of getting actors to play the 1923 starting lineup these ceremonies were for the most part a classy affair. Two highlights for me were Willie Randolph sliding into second base during his introduction and Don Larson scooping up dirt on from the pitcher’s mound into a baggie he had brought out with him.

Look Shea is my team’s home and I will be very sad to see it closed (hopefully with a World Series win) but Yankee Stadium towers in comparison of an icon and since the Yankees are not going to the post season (smile) this deserves to be a big, hyped, important event.