Overseas Fan - Fenway and the Yankees

Eric D. Schabell
Contributing Writer

I was going to be in the great city of Boston for business during the last home stand against the Yankees.

Excited you ask?

Darn tootin' I was! I wanted to fit in the Friday, 13 September 2013 night game but first thing on the agenda is to find some tickets.

Online digging for tickets, which can be a challenge for an Overseas Fan as you might know, shows that the Red Sox site is sold out.

Of course...

Next stop, online ticket auction sites which reveal that the bleacher seats which are my personal favorite in Fenway are priced out of sight. They were starting at $150 and more, but it was several months before the trip so I still had time to pull out all the stops.

I contacted the entire office in Boston, seeing if anyone had tickets left over, unused, or could be persuaded to take me along to keep them company.
Got tickets!
No luck.

Now we know that the Yankees games have a special place in the Red Sox fans heart, but this was getting crazy.

It looked like I was not going to find tickets unless I just tried to show up at Fenway before the game with my fingers crossed, hoping to find someone willing to part with their tickets at a reasonable price.

I mean, for the Angels game in June I was sitting nine rows up from the Red Sox bullpen for just $35.

Well, having given up on the tickets, I headed to Boston and resigned myself to watching the game from somewhere in a local pub. I could not help myself in the days leading up to the game, so I kept searching the auction sites and hoping.

Two days before the game it started.

The prices dropped, but along with that the tickets that were available also started to disappear from the sights as people purchased them. It was now a game of waiting and praying that a somewhat reasonable price would be reached in time for me to snap up a ticket.

More Uehara fans.
I saw $110 tickets for bleacher seats. Then $89, $85, and $79.

I waited and the day before the game they bottomed out at $52, but I just missed a set as they were snapped up by someone else. I moved on to the next auction site and was able to nab two tickets for $54, just in time!

We were in, sitting halfway up the section just above the Red Sox bullpen. Perfect.

I got there early to pick up some fan gear in the shops on Yawkey Way, a Xander Bogaerts and Koji Uehara shirt of course!

How was the game you ask?

I got in early, watched John Lackey warm up, saw Hiroki Kuroda rocket pitches in the visitors bullpen, stood not 5ft away from Salty as he went through his warm ups, and met some more Uehara fans.

I must say, we got our monies worth out of this game, with a grand slam home run by Saltalamacchia, a 1-2-3 inning of relief by Uehara, and the Red Sox beat the Yankees!

We are now a week down the road, the Red Sox have clinched their division and the standing are worth looking at for a good long while after last season.

Enjoy the ride Red Sox Nation, next stop is the postseason.


Will the Overseas Fan make a postseason game?

You never know, he is getting pretty savvy at wrangling tickets.

Post a comment or via twitter @ericschabell with your thoughts.

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