Do something about the scalpers!

Even legitimate, face-value seats are outrageously priced so a family of even average means can't possibly afford to go to the game. Decent seats are 80 bucks each. 80 bucks! If you can get them! Even the grandstand seats are 45 bucks a pop. 20 bucks to park - and don't get me started on the price of food in the ballpark. Do the math.

But an honest guy can't even get tickets. Seats just went on sale. My dad calls me up to try to get seats...I get on the web and the phone and you know what's available when you finally get through? Nothing! I try for four seats together with the four-game packages and forget it. I try for two seats together - nothing unless you want to stare at a pole. Try for individual games? OK. Day game. During the week. No two seats together! The only thing you can get are single seats.

And it was the same thing last year and the year before that.

Oh, but just go down to the ball park the day of the game. You are assaulted from the moment you get off the subway to right outside the park gate with guys selling seats - good seats. They're standing around with literally fists full of tickets! Ain't there supposed to be a law about that? Oh yeah. There is, but forget about it. These guys are standing around shouting, "TICKETS!" right in front of the cops who couldn't give less of a crap.

Do the Red Sox give a damn about the average fan? Not on your life. The tickets get sold. Who buys them and what they do with them isn't any of their concern. I don't want to deal with those bastards.

It's pathetic. I'm down to taking my daughter to hang around OUTSIDE the ballpark - and if we do go, it'll be just us with a single seat (I'll have to say she's not three yet. See? I'll be a scoff-law, too.) - sorry Grampa, you stay home.

So what's going to become of the family tradition of fathers and kids going down to Fenway together and building memories? Down the shitter of huge player salaries that's what. It's not going to be, "Gee dad, remember when you took me to see Luis Tiant beat Mark Fidrych and bought me my first Fenway Frank?" Now it's gonna be, "Gee dad, remember when we finally got that big-screen TV and watched the Sox in high-def?" (Which reminds me: Would someone please tell NESN to get out of the frickin' Stone-Age and start broadcasting the games IN STEREO!?)

There's no single entity to blame here - the players who demand every dollar they can squeeze, the agents, the cops who have better things to do, the scalpers themselves, the fans who pay them...but it starts at the top - with team ownership. They could do something about it but they won't.