Pricey Picnics Now Available in the Fens
According to the Boston Globe, the Red Sox have unveiled their new third base seating section today. Its going to be called the Coca-Cola Corner and is basically a family friendly (read: not sponsored by beer) version of the right field Budweiser roof deck. Now, I struggle to get tickets just like the next guy, so in principle, I am not opposed to adding more seats to Fenway. But will I really want to sit in these seats? I highly doubt it.
You see, these supposed “luxury” seats on the Pavilion level are going to go for a cool $75 each. And if you can’t afford the $75, there will be 100 standing room seats available for each game for $25 (so we’re paying a $5 premium to be in the upper deck - again). Yes, that’s right folks, you can sit at a picnic table in deep left field for just $75. I can’t imagine the view is very good, though for triple the price it should at least be better than last year’s failure, Conigliaro’s Corner.
That view:
SUCKS! As we highlighted in an article last year.
This bumps the capacity (for night games at least) up to 38,888. Which is pretty ridiculous - if you had asked fans back in 1989 if they ever thought the Sox would squeeze nearly 39,000 people in the park, they would think you were nuts. But hey, if we can put seats on the wall, on the field, and in the parking lot, why not out in left field too?
The coke bottles on the light tower will now be gone, replaced by an even larger Coca-Cola ad that now, get this, Blinks! The Red Sox claim this is a nostalgic move, meant to make the wall and light towers look like they did pre-1997 (except for all the seats and ads of course). Yeah, OK. They could at least admit that this is nothing more than squeezing an extra penny out of the Sox fans getting hit by inflation and recession and the corporations who apparently are willing to pay hand over fist for shiny, blinking advertisements.
To all those who said you wanted to save Fenway Park, is this really what you had in mind? The Yankees are getting their new park next year, and frankly, I want one too. It is pretty much impossible to go to a Sox game now on a budget, and these new crappy $75 seats aren’t helping anything.
I am a capitalist, and I am a Red Sox fan. I can’t say that I really blame the team for squeezing every penny out of the park and the fans that they can. But nonetheless, I’m also the guy who just wants to be able to go to as many games at Fenway as possible and sit and enjoy a game. I don’t want to pay $75 to face the wall, bombarded by blinking Coke lights, and still consider myself “lucky” that I was allowed to enter and win a lottery to give me the ever so precious opportunity to buy Red Sox tickets. We are Champions and yes, the Shaughnessy curse is broken, yet I still long for the good old days when I would go sit in my $10 infield grandstand tickets and watch Bruce Hurst and Roger Clemens have leads blown for them by a team who could only focus on offense.
Way to go Red Sox, you’ll make some extra money this year and a few more fans will eat Ramen noodles before coming to the park so they can afford the tickets. Maybe I should just move to Iowa and become a Royals fan.
Stumble it!