MVN.com: Travis Nelson's Yankees Tickets Oddysey: 2007

"Hey, what are you doing Saturday?"

"Nothing. Why, what did you have in mind?"

"How about a Yankee game?"

"Sounds great, you got tickets?"

"Nah, let's just buy them when we get there."

"OK, man. See you then!"

Have you ever had a conversation like this? Have you had one in the last five years or so? And, if so, could you actually buy tickets when you got there, without having to risk buying from a scalper? Me neither. For the last decade, as the New York Yankees have experienced unprecedented success, and have gained unprecedented popularity, it has become increasingly difficult for Joe DaFan to purchase tickets to a single game.

Yankees tickets went on sale to the General Public at 10:00 AM on Wednesday, 31 January 2007, and within an hour, virtually any decent seat to a weekend game was already off the market. One hour. So, with 26 home games on either a Saturday or Sunday, and, let's say, roughly 20,000 "decent" seats to those games in the stadium, that is, not part of season ticket plans, the Yankees are averaging almost 150 tickets sold per second, for that hour, anyway. And that's just for the weekend home games.

Right now, as I write this, it's just three, short hours since the flood ticket gates opened, and if you want three tickets to a Saturday game, you can still get them. I mean, not for games against Boston or the Mets. Or Detroit, or LAnahfornia. But, you know, against lousy teams, like the Royals, Pirates and Devil Rays, sure, you can get tickets. Those tickets are all either in the Tier or the bleachers. In some cases, you can get Tier Box seats to certain games. These tickets are about $45/each with applicable fees, and are only slightly closer to the playing field than, say, Alpha Centauri. They're called "Box" as opposed to "Reserved" seats because they're in the front of the Tier, which really just means that there are more people behind you who might spill their beer on your head. There are also, in some cases, Tier Box MVP tickets, where the "MVP" designation means that they're near the infield, but they're still in the 600-level of the Stadium, as you can see from the stadium map (complements of Ticketmaster and Yankees.com):


Read about the rest of my ordeal at MVN.com's Boy of Summer site...