World Series Blues: The Problem with Ticket Scalping

So, you want to get a couple of tickets to take your 10-year-old son to a World Series game at Fenway.

Great idea. There's nothing like a father and son spending a day at the ballpark—especially if it's the World Series.

Of course, you'd like to have reasonably good seats, so the boy can see the game and maybe even latch onto a foul ball.

Simple, right?

Hold on there pilgrim.

Those tickets are awful hard to come by—unless you happen to be a local politician who hasn't set foot in Fenway since the 2004 Series, or one of those Hollywood glamor hogs who feel like poppin' in and grabbing a seat behind the Red Sox dugout.

But the dad and his kid?

No way they'll ever get that chance—not unless Pop hits the Massachusetts state lottery the day before the game.

I decided to surf around some of the online ticket outlets (scalpers, for all intents and purposes) to see what the going price was for "decent" tickets to Game One.

The results:

Loge Box Seat, $2,144 PER TICKET

Loge, Box Seat, 14 rows above Red Sox dugout,  $1,901  PER TICKET

And you ain't gonna believe this one...

Obstructed View, $2,144 PER TICKET

Remember, Fenway is one of the great old ballparks, and the architecture of the time included poles in the grandstands to keep the roof from falling down. Classic.

If you haven't sat behind a pole at Fenway Park, you haven't seen baseball.

And if you HAVE sat behind a pole at Fenway, you DIDN'T see baseball.

But back to Dad and Son.  A couple of ducats to the game—around four grand.  That only leaves enough for a bag of peanuts...and certainly no hot dogs.

But, what the heck—you can't expect everything for a mere four grand.

The problem is common to every other sport in the nation—professional and collegiate. It's gotten to the point where real fans may never see a championship game of any sort—other than at a sports bar or on their living room couches.

I've been fortunate to sit in on World Series games at Fenway Park—1967 and 1975—and have been in the Boston Garden for Stanley Cup games and the NBA Finals.

I have yet to make it to a Super Bowl in person—and probably never will, even though my beloved New England Patriots have been in five of them.

The main reason I haven't gone?

The outlandish price I would have to pay for a ticket.

Will professional sports ever do anything to curb the price gouging—and bring the true fans back into championship games?

Probably not.

And that's a shame.

Some of my best sports memories are of classic postseason moments. Today, though,  a dad who wants to bring his kids to a postseason game has to hock the family jewels just to get in the building.

The politicians, the movie stars, and the rich and famous will all be there, of course—sitting in the best seats in the house and not knowing the difference between a base-on-balls and the infield fly rule.

What a pity.

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