foul and fair
As the World Series begins tonight, let’s hope the Rockies do a better job on the field than they did selling tickets for the games in Denver.
Yesterday’s Internet free-for-all was a junk show, coming on the heels of Monday’s computer crash, and it seems nobody wound up happy but the ticket brokers with software for penetrating the system.
Is there a lower caste in the sports world than scalper? A pair of field-level seats behind the Sox dugout at Coors Field is going for $6,000 on eBay today.
If a casual fan in Wyoming, 500 miles from Denver, could grow aggravated as his two browsers repeatedly got stuck, I can only imagine the frustration of the hard-core fans in Colorado (assuming any of those exist).
The Rockies either should have held an online lottery, like other teams do, requiring fans to register in advance, or sold the tickets at the stadium, rewarding the diehards willing to camp out and stand in line. At least with a lottery, fans are spared the annoyance of being denied all afternoon.
•
With the Sox back in the World Series and the Patriots undefeated, what sort of deal did Nato Emerson make with the Devil?
•
For anyone who’s ever been down and nearly out in Jackson Hole (just about all of us), comes the story of Will Leitch, desperate blogger turned New York Times columnist.
Here’s an excerpt from Leitch’s essay “High Pains Drifter,” part of his book about the fallout from the dot-com boom, called Life as a Loser:
According to Webster’s, a drifter is defined as: “One who drifts, especially a person who moves aimlessly from place to place or from job to job.”
Well, for a substantial number of months, friends, I was a full-fledged drifter. I don’t mean someone who moved around a lot on some sort of voyage of self-discovery. I mean someone who had no money, no place to go, nothing to do, absolutely zero worldly possessions. I’ll put it this way: You’re reading a former homeless guy.
The book details his months of couch surfing, mooching off his girlfriend, getting booted by his friends, sleeping in his office while working temp jobs and other adventures in scratching for survival. It’s a story to which those who have crashed in the rodeo grounds shanties or camped out at Mosquito Creek can relate.
A few years ago Leitch started a blog, Deadspin.com, that offers sports news from a fan’s perspective — “without access, favor or discretion.” Occasionally sticking a pin into the hot-air balloon that is ESPN, Deadspin has become one of the most entertaining sites on the Web. The writing is smart, funny, refreshingly candid, conveying the dilemma of a 21st-century sports fan caught between passion and disillusionment.
Last spring, the Times tapped Leitch to write a blog about the NCAA basketball tournament, called Out of Bounds. Now he’s back giving his take on the baseball playoffs in Fair or Foul. With wry humor and an erudite appreciation for the game, the Cardinals devotee is showing himself to be this generation’s Harvey Araton or Murray Chass. Check out “A Plague on the Yankees” from the first round or today’s guide to the cast of the World Series.
Only a few years removed from snatching spare change from his hosts’ armoires, he has written two books, and his third, God Save the Fan, will be published this winter.
Ski bums with literary aspirations and couch surfers everywhere, take heart.
Explore posts in the same categories: new york times, baseball, writing
