Thursday, September 19, 2013

The Red Sox "dollar beard night" went above and beyond my wildest expectations

The Red Sox announced that they would be selling tickets to last night's game for $1 to anyone with a beard, real or fake.  The regular game day sales window was scheduled to open at 5:40 pm, an hour and a half before the first pitch.  I took a look at the line around 5 o'clock, and it was crazy:


I came back at about 5:45, and was blown away by what happened.  The line started moving at an incredible pace.  They weren't even selling tickets, just handing them to everybody for free (I doubt it even mattered that I had a beard).  By 6 pm I was in the park.  It wasn't until after I had walked through the gate that I looked down at my ticket, and was stunned by where it was:


The spot where it says "GETBEARD" would normally read "$115."  I felt like I won the lottery.  Here's the view I had:


As far as the game goes, I'm a little discouraged by the 12 inning 5-3 defeat.  Scoring just 3 runs on 15 hits is almost impossible to do.  The Red Sox now have their first losing streak in over a month, and will fail to win a series for the first time in 9 tries.  Hopefully the Orioles don't make the playoffs, because Boston is just 6-9 against them this year.

I knew it was a bad sign when the Sox failed to score after loading the bases with nobody out in the 3rd inning; a 2-0 game should have been blown wide open.  But my main gripe is with the way they were managed in the final innings.  With the score tied, Will Middlebrooks led off the bottom of the 9th with a single.  I wanted Quintin Berry to pinch run and steal second, but it didn't happen.  In the 10th Shane Victorino began the inning with a single as well, but he wasn't running either.  And finally in the bottom of the 11th Mike Carp started things off with yet another single, and this time Berry finally came in to run.  But rather than have him steal Daniel Nava bunted him along to second.  Boston wasted all three leadoff hits, and Baltimore won in twelve.  I really hope John Farrell takes a different approach if that situation arises in the playoffs.

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