Spot The Differences

Yesterday, Arizona Diamondback tickets went on sale. Normally, that wouldn't be a big deal in our household, but this year our travel plans include a trip to Phoenix. We like to visit baseball stadiums whenever we are traveling, as we love to see what baseball is like in other parts of the country. Personally, I've been to a bunch of different ballparks, but my favorite is still Fenway. OK, I'm a little biased (as it happens to be home to my favorite team), but there really is something about Fenway that is endearing to me. True, it's cramped, somewhat uncomfortable, rickety, has obstructed view seats, has seats where you get a crick in your neck, but it's still endearing. Anyway, that's not what I meant to talk about. I meant to talk about ticket buying experiences. See if you can spot the differences between these two activities:

When tickets go on sale for the Red Sox at Fenway Park, preparations have to be made. You get as many computers as you can with as many browser windows as you can and carefully prepare them the day before. Then, a few minutes before tickets are released, you fire up all of the browsers in overlapping windows and start clicking away like crazy. By the time the sale starts, you are in more Virtual Waiting Rooms than you can count. You watch them as a whole as each one counts down before refreshing. Then you wait as the tickets sell out leaving you with nothing to do but curse the fact Fenway is so gosh darned small.

When Diamondback tickets went on sale yesterday, K clicked on a link which brought her to a calendar. She clicked on the day we wanted, which brought her to a screen where she entered in the number of tickets and was able to choose a section. She entered the weird letters on the confirmation page and got the "please wait" screen. Less than 5 seconds later, we got tickets behind home plate. Actually, we don't really like being behind home plate, so we started over and chose a different section. Bam, tickets on the third base line. Great. Now, enter in the credit card information, choose will call, and... done.

Now, besides the fact that I changed from second person to first person, can you detect the small, minute differences from the first scenario to the second? They are subtle, so it might take you a while.

Unfortunately, it's a simple matter of supply and demand. Fenway can hold ~39,000 people while Chase Field (formerly Bank One Ballpark) can hold ~49,000. Hence, there are fewer overall tickets for Fenway. There is also more demand, as the Sox (a) have a rabid fanbase and (b) have won the World Series twice in the last few years. I'm certainly not complaining, and I'm certainly not advocating the tearing-down of Fenway, but just imagine what it might be like to actually be able to get cheap tickets to go see the Sox in action. Imagine what it was like for my father to catch the T to the game, purchase tickets at the door and be able to heckle the third baseman. But, then again, back then the Sox didn't have two recent championships under their belt and my dad didn't have NESN HD. Hmmm...

03.02.2008 11:12:41 PM ET ... Link

Free! Book!

This is a public service announcement from the fine folks at arcticlounge.com. Do yourself a favor and read American Gods by Neil Gaiman. It's a very engaging story from a fine author and it happens to be free for the next month. Free! That means that there is no cost to you, the book lover. That means if you really don't like it, you can stop reading it without any penalty. And, if you really like it, there are many different ways to show that you did, including buying the book and / or everything else Mr. Gaiman has written (if you do like it, I would highly recommend Anansi Boys as well).

Here's the extra special super duper free link to a world filled with excitement, fantasy, and Gods old and new:

American Gods by Neil Gaiman - free!

02.29.2008 09:41:08 AM ET ... Link

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