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Virtual Waiting Room
You know what would be a great idea? Instead of building makeshift additions to a historic, but small, ball park, you build a brand new stadium with 50,000 or so seats. Sure, you'd couldn't brag about having one of the oldest, most historic ballparks in baseball. History and old stuff are good things. Maybe you wouldn't have an obscenely big fence that makes up for really bad park dimensions. Although you could probably make your new stadium with really bad park dimensions so people could still have their really big fence. On the other hand though, people could go to baseball games. Boston is one of, if not the, most intense market for baseball in the country (this coming from a Yankees fan). So it would be good to have a really big stadium for all those people. Then people that like baseball could go to those baseball games. Tickets would be available. They might even be cheaper. You could even make those tickets be for seats that didn't have gigantic columns in front of them.

See, it's great that Fenway Park is this old, classic ballpark with a big wall in left field. But I'd rather be able to go to a couple of games a year in a park with regular sized walls than have to scalp tickets for a game in September only two days after they go on sale.

And just in case you want to bring it up, what they're doing to the new Yankee Stadium - lowering the capacity - is criminal.
I don't think that the addition of 14,000 or so seats a game is going to make that much of a difference. Being a Red Sox fan has been one of the biggest bandwagons to hop on since 2004 and plenty of people have gone a-hoppin'. This current team and fanbase would sell out a 50,000 seat stadium just as easily as they do the current one. Don't forget that the scalpers are hammering the Virtual Waiting Room and the phone lines to grab up as many tickets as they can and they give people cheap money to spend a few hours trying to help them get tickets on various computers. The problem is the scalpers a hell of a lot more than it is the capacity of the ballpark.

I remember back in the 80s you could walk right up on the day of the game 30 minutes or so before game time and there'd be plenty of tickets available unless Clemens was pitching. It's not like the park has shrunken since then. It's just that now there's money to be made in the resale of tickets (especially with the recent change in scalping laws) and a lot of people are taking advantage of it.

Once all of the planned renovations are finished, Fenway's capacity will be just under 40,000 and that's perfectly fine. At that point the main issues with the park will be the lack of luxury suites, it's impossbile to get any of the really good field level seats unless you know someone because the companies have them all, and the obstructed view seats.

Until tickets are easier to get, I'm just fine going to a couple fewer games and spending my time in Pawtucket, Brockton, Lowell and Portland watching games.

Posted at 1/29/2007 4:02:46 AM by Mike


Capacity right now is listed at about 38,800. Adding 12,000 seats to that would get you to 50,000. You don't think increasing capacity by over 30% would help? Really? I'm going to have to disagree with you.

You are completely on point about scalpers though. I would lean towards capacity as being a bigger problem. I think the reason they are such a problem is that there are so few tickets. But yes, people are, as you say, "hammering the Virtual Waiting Room and the phone lines", shrinking an already small pool of tickets.

You say you could walk right up on the day of the game in the 80s. I remember the first Sox game I went to in 1999 I walked up the day of the game and bought a ticket. That was a Yankees game.

And about Pawtucket...couldn't agree more. Great atmosphere, good baseball, close, cheap and cheese fries.

Posted at 1/29/2007 4:50:02 PM by Jeff


 
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