Monday, March 24, 2014

Tickets to Saturday's record sellout an adventure


If you were part of that record 8,556 crowd at McKechnie Field last Saturday, raise your hand.
Sunburned? Yeah, mine, too.
And my father-in-law's.
Funny part is, we almost never made it to the ol' ballyard.
On my way to work Tuesday morning, I stopped by McKechnie to buy a pair of tickets and there was quite a line. Two of them actually.
Turns out there were a lot of folks trying to get their money back from tickets they'd bought to the St. Patrick's Day game with the Yankees.
That was the day before and it was a rainout.
Overheard one guy tell the ticket office person with some urgency they had to fly back to Pittsburgh that afternoon.
This went on for awhile.
Finally, when my turn came at the window, I asked the fellow for a couple of seats for Saturday's game with the Phillies in Section 12. We'd enjoyed seats there earlier for the March 1 game against the Rays.
Those seats weren't available, he told me, but a couple in the right field grandstand were.
Sold, I said, giving him my credit card.
Ticket envelope in hand, I returned to my truck, pulled onto Ninth Street West and continued onto work.
But before I reached 13th Avenue West, I decided to check the tickets.
Good thing.
Yikes!!! 
They were for last Thursday night's game against the Orioles.

So I turned around and headed back to the McKechnie ticket office, hoping I could make an exchange then and there.
Uh, oh.
Those two lines weren't any shorter than the ones I'd navigated before.
So I waited and waited
Aah, but I was in luck.
The woman in front of me wanted tickets to Thursday night's game with the Orioles.
Then a guy at the front of the line, who'd just finished his business at the window, announced he had two tickets to Saturday's Phillies game for $15 apiece.
First row in Section 21 in left field.
And the game's a sellout, he said.
So, bing-bang-boom, I sold my tickets to the woman for face value ($28), then turned around and paid the man for his tickets.

Of course, leave it to my mother-in-law to joke I'd bought counterfeit tickets.
They weren't.
Got the sunburns from nine innings in Section 21's first row to prove it.

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