John Meidinger knows one thing for sure
— come the opening pitch of the World Series on Wednesday, he’s
going to be in the left-field bleachers rooting for his life-long
team.
It’s just a little less certain who he’ll be high-fiving if the
Giants score.
SANTA ROSA
John Meidinger knows one thing for sure — come the opening pitch of the World Series on Wednesday, he’s going to be in the left-field bleachers rooting for his life-long team.
It’s just a little less certain who he’ll be high-fiving if the Giants score.
His younger brother Nick, who celebrated his 21st birthday in May watching the Giants play Oakland, can’t resist testing the market for the Sebastopol family’s seats.
He posted an ad on Craigslist asking $3,600 for two tickets, a mere 25 times their face value.
“I want to go,” Nick Meidinger said. “Then again, if someone out there is looking to spend that much and calls me, I wouldn’t mind hanging out in O’Neil’s, the Irish bar across the street from AT&T.”
It’s a crazy price, but as anyone with an Internet connection can verify, these are crazy times for Giants fans in the hunt for sold out World Series tickets.
As of mid-afternoon Monday, StubHub.com — a San Francisco-based company that is a major player in the secondary ticket market — had 2,866 tickets listed for Game 1 of the Series.
Nothing was listed below $425, and that was for standing room only tickets with a $50 face value. StubHub’s highest priced were $20,000 seats behind either dug out.
Of course, what sellers ask and buyers give may be totally different things. But Glenn Lehrman, head of communications for StubHub, said this year’s World Series has seen price levels unprecedented in the website’s 10-year history.
The highest priced ticket sold through the site Monday was $6,112 for a seat near home plate, he said. The average ticket has been going for around $800. He declined to say how many tickets have been sold but said activity has been just as frisky in Texas.
“This is by far the highest average ticket price we’ve done in baseball,” he said.
Lehrman wasn’t sure how to reconcile it with the nation’s economic woes, but said part of the excitement apparently comes from decades of pent-up demand.
The Texas Rangers are in the World Series for the first time in their 50-year history. The Giants are eight years away from their last Fall Classic but haven’t won since 1954, when they still called New York home.
Buying tickets from third parties can come with extra risks. Lehrman cautioned people to use sites that allow them to buy with credit cards and that offer 800 numbers for customer complaints.
“Any time you pay cash for a ticket, you have no recourse,” Lehrman said.
Bertha Fajardo, Giants community relations manager, urged people to use reputable services and avoid buying tickets in front of the ball park, which is against city laws. With modern printers, counterfeiters are getting fancy, she said.
“If you buy them off the street or off someone you don’t know, you’re taking a risk,” she said.
Of course, if you have the money, you could always make Nick Meidinger an offer he can’t refuse, though he sounds like he hopes nobody does.
“Cliff Lee versus Tim Lincecum in Game 1 of the World Series,” he said. “It doesn’t get much better than that.”
— Story by Sam Scott, The Press Democrat (Santa Rosa)
