“This inflation risks tainting the team, and the game, Bostonians have come to love.” With those words in reference to the Red Sox’ smallest ticket increase in seven years, your editors irked me, a die-hard Red Sox fan.
First of all, the corporations, doctors, lawyers, stockbrokers and bankers have held season tickets in the “expensive” seats at Fenway Park for years, forcing the “regular” fan out of these seats long before you people arrived on the scene here in Boston. I think I sat in those seats once. In 1990. I was eight. The seats were four rows off the field, first base side, and the ticket cost $30.
Second, to say the smallest ticket increase in seven years risks tainting a team like the Red Sox is absurd and ignorant. If they pulled down Ted Williams’ number nine or Yaz’s number eight from the right field overhang, then we could talk about tainting. Baseball is a business, and time and time again, people forget this. If the owners don’t get top dollar from the fans, what do the fans expect? We can’t have Fenway Park; want Ramirez, Pedro and Nomar, and expect to have cheap tickets.
Third, a $5 increase on the price of a grandstand ticket at Fenway Park isn’t going to turn people off to baseball. The game of baseball was hurt a long time ago by the greedy Major League Baseball Players Association. The MLBPA turned fans off with strikes in 1994, 1981 and 1972. Bozo Bud Selig’s ideas, or rather hare-brained schemes, have also turned fans away from the game just fine enough.
This quote, “Money has taken over America’s pastime,” was the gem of the piece. Where have you been for the last 30 years? When was the last time you watched a baseball game? I think it was when the Braves were playing in Boston and Truman was president! Yes, we all hark back to the days when the games were played during the day, the Dodgers played in Brooklyn and players wore baggy wool uniforms. Unfortunately now, the World Series doesn’t start until 8:30 p.m., the Dodgers play in Los Angeles and players wear tight polyester uniforms. Salaries have risen every year since free agency was adopted, and nothing will stop the current trend until the greedy players union agrees to a salary cap.
Finally, people in Boston are not going to stop going to see the Red Sox just because of a small ticket increase, let’s be real. The Red Sox are something that gets passed on from generation to generation. They are Boston. They are the best thing to ever happen to this town. They are the special fabric that ties this region together. If you’re not from Boston or New England, you could never understand this.
We will still go see the Sox play. We have for 100 years, and a $5 increase on tickets for seats most real fans never sit in anyway isn’t going to make us abandon baseball or the Sox.
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