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1. Gonfalon Bubble Posted: May 18, 2012 at 07:35 AM (#4134673)Yeah, what did this guy expect? "Dammit, he figured out the flaw in the system is to not move when asked to!"
I've mentioned this before, but I've had a huge amount of success with the "act like you know what you're doing" method of improving my seats.
The right to not move your ass is in the constitution, between the right to free donuts and the right to roadside littering.
EDIT: Bad joke candidate: "So, did he try to break into Yankee Stadium?"
My guess is this guy wasn't simply sitting there in some sort of Rosa Parks-like moment silently biding his time. Maybe he was but my guess is he was being a bit of a jackass.
What? A Mets fan? That's unpossible!
Naw, I kid, I kid. No mail bombs please.
The perp is actually a cop who was off-duty at the time. Clearly, he hadn't been doing much undercover work of late.
It's in the same clause as the one outlining the right of all Georgetown Law students to receive free IUDs.
EDIT: The cop is 30 years old and looks to be in pretty good shape. When I first read "stretched out," I figured he weighed at least 265.
A couple innings into the game, some folks arrived at our section, but the usher wouldn't let one of them in. Long story short: three of the fans had tickets for our section, a mile from the action, and the fourth had a ticket at dugout level, right behind home plate. The guy with the dugout level seat wanted to sit with his friends, so he wanted to sit in the far, far inferior seats in the 300-level behind the foul pole. Again, there were literally hundreds of empty seats between us and the nearest fan. The usher refused. Eventually, a supervisor came, and also refused to let the guy into our section. After a ten-minute argument, they gave up and left. It blew my mind that a business would treat its customers that way.
I was at a Braves day game a couple of weeks ago (the game when Blanton mowed through the Braves in about 2 hours), and migrated to the lower level without incident. I've found the key is to wait until the 5th or 6th inning, and act as if you belong.
I don't know if it matters, but I think it helps to have some food in your hands. If you have a hot dog and a coke that does two things. It looks like you left your seat for a reason and it would be more of a hassle for the ushers to ask you for your ticket because your hands are full.
Stadiums must be hiring more motivated ushers these days. Back in the mid-seventies I lived about an hour's drive from San Francisco and attended some 40-45 Giants games over a three year period. We would always buy general admission tickets and then move down into the field boxes by the second inning or so. By then the ushers had pretty much given up and had gone inside to get out of the wind. It has been a few years but I can only remember being asked to show a ticket a couple of times and then the only thing that happened was that we were asked to move back to the GA section.
Of course there were not many people in Candlestick Park for most games so perhaps that's why the ushers didn't feel obligated to enforce the seating rules. However, even in more occupied ballparks such as Wrigley Field and Busch Stadium II it was usually possible to upgrade one's seat if you were careful about how you went about it. As ...dingers said above, the key is to act as if you belong. Then the only disdain you were likely to get is some stares from the season ticket holders; even in Chicago though they were too polite to turn you in to the seat police. Apparently times have changed since I quit going to MLB games.
There was a free country music concert after the game.
Not that it makes it better, but I can pretty much guaranty you that the usher was looking for a bribe. Alternatively, they could have just bought a ticket. Upper deck seats to a mid-week game couldn't have been terribly expensive. The usher was being a bit of a dick, but he wasn't wrong and those people don't seem to be terribly creative problem solvers.
Then why didn't he just ask for one?
I mean, that would just be so uncouth.
Right; it's not like security just came down and slapped the cuffs on him. He was asked to move. Repeatedly.
To this day I hate everything related to the Red Sox.
This directly answers your question
Well they hate you too!
Seriously, a lot of the ushers at Fenway have been there since the dawn of time and think they run the place. They've improved that over the past decade or so but it still happens in some cases. It's too bad that guy got like that with you because the majority of my experiences with ushers at Fenway have been pretty good.
The friendliest staff I've ever encountered was at Coors Field. I interacted with a few people during my trip to Denver in 2003 and man was that a friendly bunch of people. They made me feel very welcome.
the ushers at the Box are pretty careful about ticket stubs at field level and you have to show your ticket at the door to get into the suite or club level or the VIP section on the field behind home plate. but they aren't particularly careful about the upper decks - level 3 and 4. it's easier to move down to field level or into the crawford boxes after the 4th inning of you have had the sense to scope out the empty rows and you walk in with food/drink especially if the usher is looking another way and you act like you've been there. forget getting into club/suite level without a ticket at ANY minute that the Box is open
and if you have an expensive ticket, you can exchange it for a less expensive ticket at the customer relations box. My niece and i got a couple of free suite tickets - waaaaaayyy down the 1st base line - you can't see anything - and we exchanged them for great seats on the lower upper deck - got stares of shock from the customer person, but it wasn't a problem
when we used to take the twins when they were 2 (and therefore free) we always looked around for nearby seats with hopefully 4 in a row - we always moved immediately if the right owners came, said oops, wrong row - never had ANY trouble with the folks or the ushers, even on the days the stadium was jammed.
although we have had some comments from folks who were season ticket holders when we were in seats of other season ticket holders - if we didn't actually HAVE those tix, we just said - oops, wrong row and moved.
Go Tigers.
What if you were moving out of an apartment. You paid through the end of the month, but moved out on the 15th. Is it alright for the landlord to allow a buddy to stay there through the end of the month?
Does anyone know if this guy flashed his badge?
What’s great is they used the same ushers during the U.S. Open across the street. I’d look for my guy and watch games from real seats instead of the ridiculous nosebleeds.
So how ‘bout David Wright?
What drove me crazy at Shea was the occasional need to bribe TWO ushers: the guy standing at the fence that segregated the field level seats from those above and the dude who patrolled the section you desired.
Yeah, "effectively." There's some customer relations niceties to observe, no doubt. And if a rogue squatter, and only he, gets to have the assumptions and interpretations to his benefit, you know I think he could win his argument with the ball club. However, the ball club knows something the squatter, apparently, doesn't--or doesn't want to give full weight to. Take a guess at what that is? It's that it isn't the club's call. It has a duty is to meet its obligation, not make those sorts of decisions, and if it does make them, there's downside there as to the real owner, too--both legally and in terms of customer relations.
And if I did, would you remit restitution? (Same with stadium usurper.)
That's why you have contracts. So you don't have to go through this minute parsing of the finer sensibilities at play at every juncture in the rightful occupier relationship.
I went Wednesday night as a walkup and was surprised at how the prices have come down since last season's World Series afterglow. I got a $22 ticket in the fifth row of the upper deck (euphemism: View Level) just to the right of home plate. And that was for the Cardinals, who are a pretty good draw here. The place was half-full but the 102nd consecutive sellout was announced, which presumably means Bay Area businesses are buying season tickets and not using them.
Last year, after the World Series win, it was ridiculous. I'd try to walk up for, say, a Nationals midweek day game, and the View Level seats were like $35, or they could put me in a basic lower level seat not particularly close to the field for $60 or $70. They call it "dynamic pricing," except there were never any unattractive low-price games; every game seemed to have a ticket premium on it. In that atmosphere, I felt driven to the scalpers and could do much better with them just before game time.
Haven't checked StubHub, but I know it's very active for Giants games. Also, you might sign up for Goldstar and see what kind of discount might be available through it.
Where you sit is generally a function of what you want to pay. Bleachers are cheapest but can be bitterly cold at night, even (especially?) in June. In the grandstand, the seats are fairly narrow (they've squeezed in more since the place opened), even in the lower sections. Club level is nice, with its own amenities not available to the riff-raff, but a bit pricey. View Level is high above the field, but doable as long as its between first and third, plus you get a pretty spectacular view of the "cove," bay and beyond.
My son has a ticket in the arcade above the right field wall tonight, which seems like an interesting thing to try once.
I literally don't think I've been in seats that people cared about policing since I went to M's games in the 90s. Is it always like this these days?
There are some other intersting accounts from various rockers - George Thorogood is obviously a major fan.
SOP was the "look like you belong" method, but the alternative was to slide the usher a few bucks when they asked to see your ticket (Give em your real stub with a bill tucked beneath). That was golden.
I probably knew 1/2 the ushers in the stadium before the place closed and the knew me, which made life lots easier(Course, I always tip ushers anyhow, even as a teenager I'd slide em a buck or two for showing me to my seats). Once that happened I was in, they would show me seats that they knew weren't taken that night, escort me there like I was a real customer and all.
Now, as I've gotten older, I rarely swap seats. Oooh, I may do the fifth inning move up(It's hard to resist at the usually empty Yards),but my seat hopping days are mostly over.
Partly it's just laziness, lots of it is that most of the women I've dated aren't as inclined to switch up They get all "What if we get caught?" and then I spend all my time worrying about her instead of enjoying the game from my new primo seats. That and the base fact that as I've gotten older, my access to better seats has grown exponentially.
I think pretty much ALL the seats are good. I've sat in the View Level, way back out in left field, a couple times. And it's totally fine. It's better than most of the seats in a lot of old parks. Stubhub is pretty good. If it's a weeknight, you can usually get tickets for well below the list price. Weekends the prices go up into the 20s for even the 'bad' seats. It does get really cold for night games, so plan accordingly.
A lot of the 'sold but empty' seats end up on Stubhub which is why you can get a pretty good deal for them. It looks like the 13th is a Wednesday night. The tickets I got (right behind home plate) were something like 45 bucks on Stubhub. Pretty good deal.
Unless the guy you were bribing in Shea moved with the team to Citifield.
Our group of three has given the same guy 10 or so bucks (total) each game for this. But not a regular thing, like maybe three games a season. Seemed more a tip than a bribe, never had a problem with it.
==
Seriously people, David Wright. Had the flu and got on base 5 times, and finished the day sporting a Ducks #33 Goldberg jersey while most of his teammates were wearing perfectly boring Rangers gear on hockey travel day.
Goldberg!!
I'm still a young man, so YMMV, but the occasions when I've been in seats with crowds like these are when baseball was the most fun. When everybody's rowdy, a little liquored up, heckling players and the umpires, but all in all having a good time.
At 1:45 pm, in the sixth inning, a group of eight people came up to us with an usher and told us to move to a different row because we were in their seats.
Even by Dodger Stadium standards, arriving 105 minutes late is pretty bad. And then getting an usher to kick people out of their seats when there are about 20,000 other empty seats around is amazing.
To their credit, the group did to stay until the very end of the game.
But we're talking about an exhibition game! An exhibition game. It was essentially a AAA game by the time they got there.
I guess it is a miracle, then, that the Phillies have never enforced this rule at the many games I've attended at both the Vet and CBP, yet somehow haven't alienated their entire fan base. In fact, I seem to recall they're doing pretty well on the attendance side, which you'd think would make that conflict even more constant.
A while back, I polished my "act like you belong" skills on a regular basis. Works at nightclubs, dances, ballparks,... all sorts of places. Never look around, look only in the direction you're going. Wear above-grade clothing for the occassion.
Your usher must have still been around five years later. I was in the same area, with pretty much no one else in the section, and late in the game my friend and I moved one section over so as to not be stuck behind the foul pole. So not only were we not displacing anyone, we weren't moving to higher priced seats. The usher for the new section insisted he walk with us back to our original seats. Damned fiendish.
This. I think.
The Phillies are walking a dangerous path there, totally ignoring the sanctity of contracts just so one rogue squatter can unilaterally decide what conduct is permissible. Who lets these ushers spend their time finely parsing niceties, instead of patrolling the boundaries between sections like the automatons they were hired to be? If Morty Causa owned a season ticket in the upper deck and was watching at home, and saw someone in his seat, boy would there be a lawsuit. Otherwise, what kind of precedent is set?!
Try to see the possible consequences, as I've earlier suggest, just as a thought experiment. That doesn't cost anyone anything.
That must be why Veterans Stadium had such a bad reputation. All that TV footage of those jerks with the "Wolf Pack" and "Padilla Flotilla" signs, walking back and forth in a row! And sometimes you'd see them in Row L, and a couple innings later they'd moved up to Row G! Flaunting it in the faces of law-abiding people at home. Total chaos.
SSS and all that, but I was at CBP a couple of weeks ago, and had great seats just 6 rows off the field. As I was walking to my seat and approaching an usher, I started to pull my tickets out of my pocket. The usher merely said "Do you know where you're going?" I said "Yes", and he said "Enjoy the game." without ever looking at my tickets.
And as for 20, I've poached seats at Fenway umpteen times and never got scolded by an usher for it when he brought the ticket holders to their seats. The most they do is gesture with the thumb to get out of the seat.
I believe the part about the pole.
As for not being allowed to move: That's just crazy, and impossible to enforce. If I'm in the back row and I see a block of empty seats 15 rows closer to the field and I take one, how can they stop me? Do the have Vegas-like eyes-in-the-sky, watching everyone?
Serious questions:
Is it really represented by the purveyors that they will enforce your exclusive right to the use of your seat even if you don't show up to claim that right? Where is it written down that the purchase of a ticket entitles one to the expectation of seeing the seat in question empty if one chooses to stay home and watch the game on TV? What is the harm that would be claimed by the party that chose not to use his or her seat if s/he sued the franchise for failing to evict a squatter in his/her absence?
Now, I don't have a season ticket, so I am not sure how proprietary I'd have gotten if I'd see Portly Guy sitting in the family seat where I had taken little Bobby DC to see his first major-league game and watched him eat his first bowl of Super Nachos. But it didn't occur to me to be outraged that the Texas Rangers were allowing such slipshod seating arrangements.
It would be a dim usher indeed that didn't figure that if there is a huge block of empty seats, then lo! in the fifth inning there's a guy there, he's squatting.
If you needed those seats, you should've paid for them and you got no kick if they excuse you from the area. If they don't care, then mazel tov, enjoy the improved view.
At what point can it be said that the club or the usurper reasonably know this--third inning, sevgenth, when? If that's the case, that the ticket holder loses his ownership--can the club re-sell that seat instead of allowing people to just succeed to the right by right of their charm and good heart? You need a raional system that is enforceable and that does not promote disorder.
One of their fears is not being able to satisfactorily answer the question put to them by a disgruntled usurper: Well, you let them over there move to better seats; why not me? That's why a business wants a cut and dry system of doing things. They don't want to worry about reacreating a justification for public policy support for a way of doing things on a continual basis. And ticket-holders want to know that what they bought, even they don't use it (or are late in making use of it), is theirs. That's why there's LAW. If there's isn't that's a big disincentive.
What are they like then? Is it a property right or isn't it? Has the ticket-holder bought something or hasn't he? What has he bought? Is the burden on him to make use, and use in wayp that satisfices you the poacher's sense of what's right and wrong) in certain prescibed ways for the benefit of a non-owner?
Have they purchases something or just a chance at something. It then behooves them to make an appearance as the poacher dictates or it becomes his unsettling, maybe embarassing, duty to initate acxtion that the poacher is dispossessed. If that's so, he may think he didn't buy what he thought he had. And he may not buy it again.
How about, "If somebody shows up with tickets to those seats, you have to leave quickly and quietly." Seems pretty rational and enforceable to me. And in my recent experience at ballparks, they aren't doing a particularly good job with the whole "don't promote disorder" thing anyway. Like the ushers in my field level infield section at Camden Yards on a Tuesday night in April who refused to do anything about the drunk guy three seats away from me who kept screaming vile, profane, graphic, homophobic slurs at every opposing player, every umpire who made a call that went against the Orioles, and every other ticket holder who asked him to tone it down. Now those same ushers weren't doing much about squatters either, but the squatters weren't interfering with anybody's enjoyment of the game.
He has bought a piece of paper that grants him the right to the use of a specific seat upon presentation of said piece of paper. The idea that he has also bought proxy enforcement of a temporary property right is certainly arguable, but it's not exactly obvious that the sale of ticket imposes such a contractual obligation on the seller (EDIT: in the ticketholder's absence). The likelihood that a ticketholder who hasn't presented his ticket by say, the end of the fifth inning, is actually going to be meaningfully harmed by the ticketseller's enforcement of his right to the seat becoming a little bit less enthusiastic at that point is virtually nil.
At Fenway, you'd have to sneak down to the field box seats, but any other seat, from the big aisle up to standing room, is open for anyone to sit anywhere until the people with the tickets show up to claim the seats.
Not only have I seen it, I've lived it. Back in high school, a girl and I went to a game that wasn't heavily attended. We quickly sneaked down into excellent seats about 8 or 10 rows behind the lefthand corner of the first base dugout, in a section that was maybe 10% filled. For the next several innings, we watched other people do exactly the same thing we did... and instantly and repeatedly get ousted by security, thus restoring the seats to their pristine, aerated, assless condition. But the ushers never so much as spoke to us.
Best seats I ever usurped were 4th or 5th row, center section behind home plate at Fenway. It was this mid-August game, and George Brett and Wade Boggs were the two guys going for the AL batting title. Brett took the lead in this game, .358 to .356, by going 4-for-5. After hitting a triple in his last at-bat, Brett stood on third base, turned to Boggs, and stuck his tongue out at him.
Of course with the sort of security now in place, what seems to be a lost art is gate crashing. Before the Lombardi / George Allen era, D.C. Stadium (later RFK) was the easiest to sneak into (just go around to the east side and pull yourself up by those overhanging cross-rods, then duck into a deserted women's bathroom in the CF upper deck), with Memorial Stadium second, at least for night games (just climb over the outer CF fence and hide behind the trees, where you had a decent view of the action). I doubt if any modern stadium would be that easy to crash, but maybe someone can testify otherwise.
Ghost to the post
I can still see Casper catching that game-ending pass**, and being totally crushed. I never warmed to the Unitas Colts, but that 1975 "Fog Game" against Miami made me a Baltimore fan for life, first the Colts and now the Ravens.
**Even after the actual GTTP play that set up the tying TD in regulation, I still thought that the "Coats" were going to pull it out.
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