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It’s Truck Day!

In honor of the Red Sox Truck Day, here is Truckin’, performed by the Grateful Dead, April 17, 1972 Koncertsal – Copenhagen, Denmark.

Truck Day, for you non-baseball fans, is the day when they send the truck off to Florida from Fenway Park in Boston, loaded with all their gear, in preparation for the start of Spring Training. It started out as an unofficial start to the baseball pre-season for fans, and has blossomed to the point that this year, the truck is emblazoned with an ad for Jet Blue. I guess we ought to have expected it.

12 Feb 10 | Baseball, Music Video | Comments (0)

Red Sox Ticket Prices, StubHub and Ace Tickets

Back in the day, I used to go to Red Sox games…lots of Red Sox games, as many as 30 or so a year.

In the past couple years, not a game. In fact, I’ve never taken my two daughters. Prices obviously enter into this – read this on the pricing thisyear from ESPN

Following an across the board freeze of all ticket prices in 2009, approximately two-thirds of the tickets at Fenway Park will stay at 2009 levels or increase by $2 for the 2010 season and no single price category will increase by more than $5. In 2010, 63% of the tickets at Fenway Park will be $52 or less, with the lowest ticket price remaining at $12.

For many of you, you’re saying, that’s not so bad, go for the $12 tickets. That’d peg you immediately as someone that has never been in the bleachers at Fenway. It’s traditionally not a place for your kids…at least not for my kids.

The real rub in my mind is that I can’t get tickets to the games I want, such as the May 7 game against the Yankees without going through a scalper like StubHub or Ace Tickets. Both have hundreds if not thousands of tickets to that game. Meanwhile, Redsox.com, the official box office has none…not a single ticket for the game. This, just ONE DAY after tickets went on sale.

So how’d that happen?

You see in 2007, Stubhub.com signed a 5 year deal with MLB to resell tickets. On the face of it, the deal was to allow fans to resell their tickets. Are we honestly to believe that thousands of Red Sox fans waited online Saturday and then changed their mind on Sunday and are now selling their tickets.

No, obviously not.

The big question here has to be asked of the Red Sox: are you providing tickets directly to StubHub? If so, then that ought to be figured into the average cost of ticket prices.

If this is the case, then the Red Sox and MLB have found an excellent way to increase revenues, without having to face the bad PR of drastically increasing ticket prices. Also, if this is the case, then both the Red Sox and MLB need a trip to the woodshed.

I fired off an email to the Red Sox box office:

Why is it one day after tickets went on sale, games such as the May 7 Yankees game are unavailable from your site, but StubHub has hundreds if not thousands of tickets. Do you sell or in any way provide tickets to StubHub?

As a fan, this situation is not acceptable.

What do you think? Should fans be forced to buy their tickets from secondary sources?

Kind of funny to think that StubHub’s motto, “Sold out? Not us…” when for MLB for this is definitely a Sell Out.

(Note: I contacted the Red Sox via email on Sunday and as of the publish time of this post, have not received any sort of reply).

02 Feb 10 | Baseball, marketing | Comment (1)

Oh Foul Fate…

My name is Mark and I’m a Red Sox fan…

Not much can be said about yesterday, a truly epic failure that will leave Red Sox reliever Jonathan Papelbon firmly in the goat seat for the next year, for the most part undeservedly. Let’s face it, without him, the Sox would have been playing golf last week, not tasting the joy and sorrow of post season ball.

In early August I posted a simple message to the #redsox Twitter hashtag: “I don’t feel it this year…” I stand by that. After a dismal July, and a complete failure of our big bat to show up in April or May, or our seeming inability to stop a steal, we had no right to expect post season play, much less that it would really lead anywhere. This team was streaky, with prolonged batting droughts and then massive spurts of production that made the stats meaningless. When you’re prone to throwing up Ofer games throughout your lineup, bad things happen.

Much will be said about this collapse, but the truth is this: the way this team played, they had no right to be in the playoffs. For next year, expect more of the same, if they don’t open the purse strings and find some offense to add to the lineup. I am thankful to Varitek, Ortiz and a the rest of the team, but it’s time for us to look forward, instead of honoring our past. We have a potential pitching lineup next year that only comes around once, a staff so utterly packed with studs that we need to take advantage now, and not allow it to slip through our fingers while we suffer a “rebuilding year” or two.

Theo: your best bet is to keep your pitching staff as is, then build around the young guys. Ellsbury, Pedroia, Martinez and Youkilis are the future.

The good news is that in baseball today you don’t necessarily have to settle for a rebuilding year. The rules haven’t been fixed, so we can still do a Steinbrenner and buy our way out of purgatory. The even better news is that the Red Sox can potentially afford to do this.

Yesterday, I predicted there was no way our boys rolled over and coughed up the ALDS game the Angels. My exact words:

#redsox will win today. Their bats will come alive and wreak havoc on Kazmir. Mark my words.

They let me down. They let us down. They let themselves down. Truly, who didn’t see it coming when they opted to walk Tori Hunter to get to Vlad Guerrero? I know Vlad was 1-7 lifetime against Paps, but really?

The Red Sox management has as much or more blame here on the field. From slow managerial reactions, to the over dependence on keeping the faith in non-performing stars, to the failure either during the off season or in season trading to find some serious offense. All problems they failed to deal with or dealt with too late to matter. Now, almost everyone of those issues will be on the plate again for the off season. We will learn more about this organization this off season than we have learned in either of our World Series wins…as it is in adversity that we see the true character of a team.

As far as the post season, I find little to cheer for. There’s really no one left I can find it in my heart, with the possible exception of the Phillies. We’ll see if I can even drag myself in front of the set again.

For now, the only comfort is in the words we older Red Sox fans cut our teeth on…maybe next year.

12 Oct 09 | Baseball, Sports | Comments (0)