That’s The Ticket

If you want to feel like a rock star, forget about dating Christina Aguilera or causing a fatal car accident, and just get tickets to an important sporting event. Having attended both Game 3 of the Red Sox’s first-round playoff series and the Patriots’ win over the Titans the next day, I have sipped from the golden chalice of the good life. The bad news is, I’m finding it hard to return to the plastic cup of mediocrity.

I lucked into tickets for both games. In the case of the Red Sox, my friend Neskey was taking a break from carving up cadavers in medical school and offered me his extra ticket. Neskey possessed this coveted slip of paper because Papa Neskey, who has season tickets, was out of town that weekend. I’d like to publicly thank Mr. Neskey not only for the ticket, but for planning a trip to California during the playoffs. I’d also like to add that the Chon Buri Buffalo Races, held around World Series time in Chon Buri, Thailand, are not to be missed. I’m just pointing that out.

When I go to Fenway I usually end up sitting either in the top row of the bleachers, behind an enormous stanchion, or, in one unfortunate instance, in the alcohol-free section. But Neskey’s seats were six rows back on the third-base side, so close that you could almost hear Barry Zito humming Phish songs in the visitors’ dugout. We didn’t get our own little TV screen like Ben Affleck and J. Lo, but it was high society nonetheless. While everyone ate hot dogs, drank beer and displayed the usual enthusiasm for the Red Sox, I got the distinct impression that many of my fellow occupants in the box seats would find it useful if Fenway included a decent helicopter landing pad. I tried to act like I belonged, but my crude exuberance gave me away in the 11th inning, when Trot Nixon homered and I almost threw Neskey onto the field like an octopus after a hat trick. I consider picking up one’s friends and flailing them to and fro to be a normal reaction to a postseason walk-off home run, but a quick glance around confirmed that our neighbors were wondering if Neskey had somehow lured Little Joe, the escaped gorilla, into the park for a ballgame.

The next day Neskey and I headed to Gillette Stadium on our second man-date in as many days. At the gate we met Skip, who hooked me up with the tickets. Skip works for Fox Sports Net, which I hereby endorse as the best sports network on TV, at least until someone from ESPN gives me better seats. I’d never been to a Pats game before, and I was pleasantly surprised that the crowd at Gillette made my own meathead antics the night before seem like the serene satisfaction of a 1950s TV mom who has baked a perfect blueberry pie. Everyone at the game was a bigger meathead than me, including the woman who marched up and demanded I tell her the location of the nearest ladies’ room. (I apparently looked like a more likely resource for that information than any of the women milling about.) As soon as she was out of earshot Neskey muttered, “She definitely pees standing up.”

One symptom of testosterone saturation is compulsive high-fiving, an activity that was in effect throughout the game. This posed a problem because I carefully wash my hands after going to the bathroom, a habit that seemed to put me in the minority at Gillette. The tattooed, pierced, jersey-wearing guys in front of our seats didn’t strike me as big hand-washers, but they were big high-fivers. The hulking, screaming lunatic in front of us looked genuinely saddened when he turned around to high-five Neskey and found him entranced by the JumboTron. In an act of solidarity, I reached over and high-fived him myself, lest he notice that I refuse to use the word “cowboy” as a verb and climb into our row to give us purple nurples.

The rampant spread of dangerous microbes aside, going to a game has it all over watching it on TV, not least because you get to feel superior to everyone who didn’t have tickets. “Yeah, I was there,” I casually told anyone I heard talking about Nixon’s homer the following Monday. “Yeah, I was there too,” I’d say when the conversation turned to the Patriots. As I write this the Sox are playing the Yankees, and I can still say I was there, but only if you’re talking about the end of the enormous line of people waiting, futilely, to get into Who’s on First once the ticket-holders left for their seats. ∂