WS Day Minus One

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In his regular Dodgers Dugout column Houston Mitchell of the LA Times does a position-by-position comparison between the Dodgers and Astros, which I think is tilted a little toward his hometown team. But here’s what I found interesting in the column: a discussion of ticket pricing and a prescription for what to do about the secondary market.

There’s something wrong in the world when I can fly to Houston, stay overnight and buy a ticket for a World Series game there for cheaper than I can stay in L.A. and buy a ticket for a game here.

Places like StubHub are asking for $1,250 for a seat in the top deck. Unless you were the lucky ones to win the chance to buy tickets through the Dodgers.com lottery, there’s no way an average fan can attend a game. That’s a crime. I have kids to send to college. Am I supposed to tell them, “Sorry, no college for you so we can go to a World Series game?”

If I was the Dodgers, here’s what I would do:

1. Discover which Dodgers fans are selling their tickets through a secondary market for a jacked-up price and bar them from ever buying a postseason ticket again.

2. Buy up as many secondary tickets as I could and pull more names from the online lottery. Sell the tickets to those people.

I was curious and looked at StubHub; I discovered that the least-expensive ticket available for a game at Dodger Stadium was $950, and that was a week ago. I don’t know if Mitchell’s suggestion would work, but he’s definitely got a point. Of course, this isn’t new. I remember a Roger Angell column from 40 years ago in which he wrote of a conversation with a player in the Series who looked up in the stands and asked “where are all the people who were here all year,” meaning all the seats were now in the hands and fannies of corporations and the like, not the long-term fans.

Seager is healthy enough to play, they and he say. Also, Charlie Culberson kept the ball he caught for the final out of NLCS Game Four, but he hasn’t yet found a really good place to display it.

Here’s an interview with Orel Hershiser in which he insists that what he did in 1988 (and there’s a brief recap of the number of appearances he made in the postseason) could still be done by today’s athletes if needed, but lineups and bullpens are built differently now.

Sports Illustrated baseball writers predict the Series outcome.

37 thoughts on “WS Day Minus One”

    • Not the way I would have gone. Another pen arm seems redundant. Dodgers also reduce left-handed batting options without Grandy and reduced flexibility for using Grande off the bench. This against a team with only one southpaw starter and another in the pen. Probably would have left Farmer on the roster.

      • Except Granderson seemed so lost at the plate. Flexibility doesn’t matter if the performance isn’t there.

        • I am fine with Grandy out. It’s that not having Farmer limits the option that Doc has in using both Grandal and Barnes for games played as DS.

    • Darling seemed to be confused on what Klayton was throwing, thinking that the sliders thrown later in the game was his curve and saying that it was getting better.

  11. I got a Reserve Section seat for $950, then learned there was an additional $140 handling fee!
    Oh well . . . it’s a once in 29-years event, right? (But hopefully more frequently now.)

  16. If you watch the final out catch made by Culbertson on video you can see him put the ball into his back pocket before he joins the scrum.

  17. The ticket pricing is a huge problem. The only solution I can think of would be to not allow resales. Put a name with the tickets and check IDs at the door. Other than that, we have what we have.

  19. In 1974, I attended Games 3-4-5 at the Mausoleum (as Sal Bando called it) on walkup tickets I purchased for $4 each. My only in-person Series, but the results were less than optimal.

  21. Difficulty seems to be weighing of season stats versus post-season. Looking at season stats, he seemed to tilt toward Puig over Reddick, otherwise seemed pretty balanced in his assessment