Tickets? You need stinkin' tickets

I admit I am not part of the real world. I usually use credentials to cover games. I sit in the press box where I write stories. Then I go to the locker rooms to talk to coaches and players. Then I come back to the press box and write stories, blogs, what have you.

Unfortunately, I'm starting to see how it is in the real world.

I'm planning a vacation to the East Coast. One part of the vacation is taking in a Boston Red Sox game.

And there is the problem.

Up until 1996, I had always been able to purchase tickets from the club ahead of time.

Not anymore.

The Red Sox are on about a 10-year sellout streak (OK, I'm exaggerating, more like five or six).

The only tickets that are available are through ticker "brokers''. Down here, we call them scalpers.

For the series I'm looking at these fine broker services are asking $50 to sit in the bleachers. That's one ticket. That's one game. Fifty bucks.

Now, do you really want to have an 8-year-old sitting with you in the bleachers? Heck, I sat in the bleachers at Fenway in the early 1990s and saw a whole row of fans carted out for smoking weed.

So if you to the grandstand, the cheapest tickets you're looking at there are about $80. That's one game. That's one ticket.

I realize you fans shell out lots of money to go to games. I didn't realize how much. I guess I should have a little more empathy when sports events don't sell out here. There is only so much disposable income and some of these prices are jarring in themselves.