Lemony Tickets – podcast 37

March 7, 2008

Here’s Bowl of Cheese podcast number 37. It’s titled Lemony Tickets (as if you couldn’t read).

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Thanks for listening… and here’s the show 37 transcript:

Splitting up season tickets for a sports team is much more difficult than cutting a cake into equal parts or sharing a package of Fun Dip.

In fact, if you think ripping a burrito in half might present the potential for gooey innards all over freshly pressed jeans, you’ve never had to divide a 72-game baseball season between three people.

Add to that equation the fact one of these owners will be in Korea for about 11 games and the other has decided to procreate and has planned to pop out an ankle-biting creature sometime in the last month of the season, and you’ve certainly got a recipe for confusion bouillabaisse.

Maybe I’m hungry this morning and that’s why this little podcast appetizer is served up with a full menu of food references, but it’s cooking nicely so let’s go with it.

72 games? What sort of league is this? It’s actually minor league baseball. They play about 10 fewer games than the guys in the MLB and the season ends early enough for fans to concentrate on the NFL pre-season. It’s a win-win. But not when it comes to the ticket split.

In this particular scenario I tried to make things easy by buying three tickets and finding two people to split the season with. That way each of us was essentially paying the price for one season ticket but we would each get 24 games with THREE tickets.

I’m not sure I was really thinking. With three tickets it’s tough to find companions. Say Clownface and I want to attend a game together. We can do the standard thing and invite ONE other person—either one of her friends or one of mine.

We can do the altruistic and insane thing—offer to take one of my nieces or nephews to the game with us.

We can eat the third ticket.

Or we can bask in the delight of having extra arm and leg room by leaving an empty seat between us. Better still would be leaving a seat between us and the people further down the row.

But that is sort of a waste and I’m already thinking about next year’s plan. Maybe we just do two seats. Still divide them by three. Pay about a third less, but never have a third wheel or other confusing seat problem.

In all likelihood I’m going to end up attending about 35 games or more. Even though I have 24 games, one of the other guys is the person I usually go with so we’re probably going to go together to the majority of the games.

Then, for times that I don’t feel like going—really chilly days in April, nights when something else presents itself, holiday weekends that are delightfully jammed with wedding activities, and hot summer days when I’d rather be on my bike—I’ll offer the tix up to the other two guys, random friends, or even post them for sale on Craigslist.

It’s slightly ironic that I’m so caught up in my possible failure as the ticket organizer. I’ve done my best and am probably going to end up with all three of us happy about 80% of the time.

Why’s this ironic? Because it’s all about baseball and if a player is successful in that game more than 30% of the time, he’s a shoe-in for Cooperstown.

I’m not saying I’m Hall-of-Fame material. But I will admit that I know how to split a burrito.