popular thinking

What a great day to watch the Red Sox sweep the Yankees out of Fenway Park, the first time they've done that since 1990. Almost perfect weather. And how about that back-to-back-to-back-to-back home run derby! A Red Sox first, and only the fifth time that's ever happened in Major League Baseball. Ever. So sweetly surreal. Finally, Dice-K got some run support, and he needed it last night since it was his roughest outing so far this young season. He didn't have great control. Left some pitches high and right, which certainly helps explain why he hit both Jeter and A-Rod. Almost all of the hits off Dice-K came off lefthanded batters. No worries, though, as Papelbon came in to take care of the ninth inning. How desperate was Joe Torre, though, to win last night's game, bringing Pettitte in for the sixth? Anyhow. Wow. What a game. I'm so glad I decided to try to get a ticket. And what a ticket I got, nine rows directly behind home plate. No scalping required. All I had to do was follow the Fenway day-of-game ticket sales rules. Learned this last year when I got tickets for Father's Day, although the rules seem to have slightly changed. Each game, the Red Sox release about a couple of hundred scattered tickets two hours before the first pitch. You need to get an official white slip from Red Sox workers while in line to verify you were in line. You're not supposed to start forming the line until five hours before the game, although when I arrived on Lansdowne Street at 3:30 p.m. (4 1/2 hours before), there already were a couple of hundred folks lined up along the sidewalk between Gate E and Gate C. Still, I figured it was worth a shot. And I had a magazine and my iPod to pass the time. About an hour into the wait, the group of Korean students who showed up right after me began talking me up, asking me to pose in pictures with them and calling me their friend. How nice of them. As I noted above, they even offered me a hot dog and some sips from their sodas. Anyhow. The ticket line began moving at 6 p.m., but we didn't make it to the window until just after 7 p.m. But we made it. The guy in the booth said he still had seats ranging from $27 to $110 available. He could read the stunned look on my face and added that he had a $105 ticket behind home plate. Sold! The Koreans ended up getting 11 tickets together at the top of the grandstand above first base. As for my seat, the season-ticketholders in my section said I got the seat the Red Sox holds for scouts. No scouts needed for Sox-Yanks in April! Behind me sat a guy from the commissioner's office (apparently there to monitor the umps or something) and the stadium's official radar gun guy. He had an extra seat for his computer, in which he'd input each pitch type and speed to go up on the big scoreboard. An ESPN radar guy sat four rows directly in front of me. It was a great seat. I only wished I had my actual digital camera, because my cameraphone could only produce that blurry image above. When I got home, I saw on the highlights that my seat barely made it into the ESPN's camera shot, although sometimes my fuzzy face got obscured by the score line at the top of the screen. Regardless, I'm so glad I decided to make a night of it at Fenway. It's comforting to know that even when it comes to Sox-Yanks, you still can make a game-day decision to go and be rewarded for it.