MLB 2018: let the games begin!

[Dave Garrett]

On 11/5/2018 at 3:59 PM, Brad said:

 

He’s got a piece in today’s New Yorker but it’s not about baseball but about voting.  He’s 98 and legally blind so that may be why he doesn’t write baseball articles anymore.

Get Up and Go Vote

Yeah, I saw that yesterday, and the revelation of his blindness confirmed my earlier suspicions. Although I subsequently saw an exchange of comments with someone saying much the same thing, to which a blind person responded that he didn't think impaired vision should be an impediment to writing about baseball, as baseball lent itself more than any other sport to listening to games on the radio.

While true, I think that's sort of missing the point. Angell has certainly earned a well-deserved retirement, and I'll be glad to read the occasional piece from him for as long as he continues to write them.

[mjazzg]

Can I tap the MLB knowledge of you all?  MLB is staging a game in London next year and I'm intending to try and get tickets when they go on sale on Monday. I'm intrigued by the sport and think it'll be a great event. We're getting the Yankees v. Red Sox, names that mean something to me but only really from popular culture references

If this were cricket or football (soccer) I'd know exactly where to try and sit but as I've never seen baseball live before I was wondering where in the stadium I should look to sit?  I'm guessing the seating plan will display with regards to the diamond (correct phrase? apologies if not)

Any help gratefully received

[Brad]

I always try to sit behind or slightly to the left (if it’s on the third base side) or to the right (if it’s on the first base side) of one of the dugouts although because tickets are expensive that can mean anywhere from 15 rows up from the field all the way to the upper deck. 

[Dan Gould]

1 hour ago, mjazzg said:

Can I tap the MLB knowledge of you all?  MLB is staging a game in London next year and I'm intending to try and get tickets when they go on sale on Monday. I'm intrigued by the sport and think it'll be a great event. We're getting the Yankees v. Red Sox, names that mean something to me but only really from popular culture references

If this were cricket or football (soccer) I'd know exactly where to try and sit but as I've never seen baseball live before I was wondering where in the stadium I should look to sit?  I'm guessing the seating plan will display with regards to the diamond (correct phrase? apologies if not)

Any help gratefully received

I read that tickets are unbelievably expensive - the very best seats are in the section behind home plate but they may be crazy expensive.  Best value is to get a seat at the margins of where the price points shift - no difference in view, better price. But in general I would want seats from the perimeter of the infield, in toward home plate.  I haven't loved bleacher seats (out beyond the fences) but they do have the advantage of a straight-on view, just way back.

Now that I've found a seat chart I'd try to get seats from 102 around to 114.

If you get tickets please let us know what you thought after witnessing a game.

[mjazzg]

Thanks gents.

I'd not seen the seating plan and those prices are scary. They outsrip Ashes cricket prices, from cat5 upwards, which takes some doing. For cat3 upwards I'd want to be on the field of play  (I could import a Mosaic box for those figures)

Are they ridiculously over-inflated compared to pricing for this fixture if it was in US?

[Dan Gould]

19 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Thanks gents.

I'd not seen the seating plan and those prices are scary. They outsrip Ashes cricket prices, from cat5 upwards, which takes some doing. For cat3 upwards I'd want to be on the field of play  (I could import a Mosaic box for those figures)

Are they ridiculously over-inflated compared to pricing for this fixture if it was in US?

Here is the view Mom and I had at Wrigley Field in September. $475 for two seats, I'd say its equivalent to Section 105.

I'd try the bleacher seats inside the foul poles.  I don't know how steep the bowl is but those nosebleed seats behind home plate (the yellow) seem outrageous. Those are like $10 a pop in the States.

 

[mjazzg]

Thanks again Dan. That photo's very interesting as the equivalent seat at the most expensive cricket match would be £120 so baseball's generally more expensive it would seem.  I suspect they know there's going to be huge demand from baseball-starved US ex-pats, UK aficionados, corporates and just the plain curious like me.

It's actually quite difficult to work out from the plan where some of the seats are and how the diamond's going to orientate onto the football pitch. Looks like a 90 degree turn so the diamond will be across the width of the stadium rather than length. How long is the diamond at its longest point from? 

I saw the Rolling Stones at the stadium in the summer and some of those nosebleed tickets were way off the stage but that was at one end of the stadium.

[Dan Gould]

I always think of the diamond as the infield, which is 90 feet between bases and about another 20 feet of dirt before the outfield grass. But looking at google maybe the proper definition is the field in its entirety, in which case the distance from home plate to center field fence should be something like 400 feet to be comparable to the typical distance in the States.

[Brad]

This past year I had seats five rows behind the visitors dugout at Citifield but it was so blazing hot that I moved upstairs to the upper deck, which was shaded from the sun.  Sitting upstairs gives you a better perspective of the whole field; you can see how the fielders are positioned and how they move from batter to batter.  In addition, since the higher seats may be less expensive, you may enjoy the game a bit more. 

[JSngry]

If you don't know the game all that well and also need to budget, you might want to consider sitting in the 205-211 area. You'll lose a good bit of the intimacy/immediacy, but you will also be able to watch how everybody moves when the ball is in play. Many of the earliest TV broadcasts used this view as their default, although more out of necessity than anything else.

Caveat - it it's a pitcher's duel and the ball isn't put into play a lot, you're not going to have a lot to look at. But if there's a lot of offense, watching everybody on the field execute can be quite entertaining.

Ah, Brad offers the same advice!

[mjazzg]

I don't know the game at all apart from very little picked up from films, books etc..  The intricacies will be lost on me, even though I intend to do my homework if I get a ticket. I want to experience a match almost as much as a cultural experience as a sporting one, although the sight of top ranking sports performers is a big pull too (I'll let others decide if the teams playing will give me that  )

The pricing is off-putting, I'll admit. My friend and I had discussed costs beforehand and set a limit of £75 (based on Premiership football and international cricket ticket pricing) and that would leave us nowhere near where you're all helpfully suggesting. Maybe I need to sell some Mosaic boxes...

[sidewinder]

2 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

Here is the view Mom and I had at Wrigley Field in September. $475 for two seats, I'd say its equivalent to Section 105.

For that price I would expect a personal butler, complementary drinks and hors douvres, post-match goody bag and transportation to and from venue..

43 minutes ago, mjazzg said:

Maybe I need to sell some Mosaic boxes...

Do you have Commodore Vol 3? 

[Dan Gould]

3 minutes ago, sidewinder said:

For that price I would expect a personal butler, complementary drinks and hors douvres, post-match goody bag and transportation to and from venue..

They didn't even have sturdy cardboard carriers for drinks and hot dogs from the concession stand, leaving me trying to balance a box of dogs/fries on top of uneven height cups. Fortunately some friendly midwesterners helped me before half of her beer went down my leg.

On the other hand we didn't really need transportation to and from, as we stayed at the Hotel Zachary.  $880 a night including unfriendly Chicago taxes on tourists.  Puts those seat prices in perspective.

Here's the view from the hotel room balcony.

[Brad]

For teams like the Cubs and the Red Sox, whose stadiums are smaller than the average and who are always competitive, ticket prices are always going to be more expensive.  Tickets to events are very expensive in this country. They get cheaper when your team is terrible  I can't speak for other stadiums but at Citifield, where the Mets play, if you're sitting in the field level, they offer a waiter service so you don't have to wait on line. It adds a little cost but it can be worth it. 

[JSngry]

"Wait on line"...that's a pet peeve. When did it stop being waiting in line? It's not like we're bits and bytes, nor is it like on those Fidelity(?) commercials where there's a literal line that you walk on.

#grumpyoldfart

[Brad]

How about queuing up?

[T.D.]

22 minutes ago, JSngry said:

"Wait on line"...that's a pet peeve. When did it stop being waiting in line? It's not like we're bits and bytes, nor is it like on those Fidelity(?) commercials where there's a literal line that you walk on.

#grumpyoldfart

I grew up in the Chicago area, went to school in Michigan and upstate NY, and never heard "wait on line" until I moved to NYC.

I always assumed it's a regional thing that became widespread because of NYC's dominance in media, etc.

[Dan Gould]

FWIW, google tells me:

The Times’s Stylebook weighs in on the matter definitively, saying:

Few besides New Yorkers stand or wait on line. In most of the English-speaking world, people stand in line. Use that wording.

 

So readers of the NYT perpetuated ON line but even they recognize its IN line for everybody else.

Personally I am not even sure what I use, having more or less grown up in the NY metro area.

[JSngry]

25 minutes ago, Brad said:

How about queuing up?

Not commonly heard in these parts, but at least it's logical language, a queue being by definition explicitly related to waiting.

Now, waiting on lime, that makes sense, I've had that experience more than a few times.

[mjazzg]

16 hours ago, Dan Gould said:

In most of the English-speaking world, people stand in line. Use that wording.

certainly don't do any such thing in this English-speaking corner of the world. We queue (no 'up') and as Brits we tend to make a national sport of it too. I'll be in an online queue on Monday morning for the MLB tickets...

[Soulstation1]

JB = Freakin’ Legend 

[ghost of miles]

On 11/30/2018 at 10:03 AM, JSngry said:

If you don't know the game all that well and also need to budget, you might want to consider sitting in the 205-211 area. You'll lose a good bit of the intimacy/immediacy, but you will also be able to watch how everybody moves when the ball is in play. Many of the earliest TV broadcasts used this view as their default, although more out of necessity than anything else.

Caveat - it it's a pitcher's duel and the ball isn't put into play a lot, you're not going to have a lot to look at. But if there's a lot of offense, watching everybody on the field execute can be quite entertaining.

Ah, Brad offers the same advice!

Completely agree with this—I sat in the Yankee Stadium equivalent of 205-211 (ot maybe just a bit lower) when I went to a game this past summer—very affordable and yes, a comprehensive view of what was happening on the field.