Is this guy really the problem?

By Troy Foster

COLUMBUS, Ohio — It feels like I’ve been falling so far behind. Eleven days have passed with no blog entries out of my camp.

There are many reasons for this. One sticks out the most, but I think I’ll tuck that one away and write about it tomorrow. I’d like to catch up first by discussing one or two interesting things related to baseball we’ve come across since my last writing.

Let’s see …

I could talk about the Curse of the Billy Goat, and the nephew of the Greek immigrant who keeps it alive at a small tavern in downtown Chicago.

I could talk about the best baseball movies of all time, and how a very sloppy, unscientific poll of Minnesota Twins fans gave us a completely accurate picture of the top three: “Bull Durham,” “Field of Dreams” and “The Sandlot.”

Or I could talk about the best way to score an autograph at a baseball game, thanks to the wisdom of two pros who have used their charm, wits and stunning curves to get their baseballs signed by Brewers.

I could even talk about how great it was to have Dad around for two games in Chicago.

I might come back to all these subjects, but for now I have to add my $0.02 to the little incident that almost landed Daren in jail five days ago.

Daren has written a much more titillating summary of his encounter with the Chicago Police Department that you can read here.

But to recap, my BaseCrawl buddy attempted to sell two extra tickets we had to the White Sox-Cubs game. This activity was part of our greater project. At every city we visit, we pursue a unique story related to Major League Baseball, but rarely is the story about baseball itself.

We chose ticket scalping as our topic for Friday’s interleague game between the Chicago Cubs and Chicago White Sox. It was a sold-out affair, and we felt it was the perfect opportunity to explore the whole culture ticket trading — the free market in its purest form.

I hope you have already read Daren’s recount of getting busted, and if you haven’t, I’ll remind you again that you can read it here. As this was all going down, I was standing across the street catching the whole thing with my camera.

Call me naive, but I didn’t know what Daren was doing was illegal. I still fail to see how this is any different than what the price gougers at www.StubHub.com have done to us several times already, including some of the tickets we bought for this game. 

We’ve seen ticket scalpers at every game so far. In the parking lot of Miller Park, a guy sold us two nosebleeds for $20 apiece, then bragged about how he had just made $1,000 in two hours. He said he owned a ticket brokerage, produced a business card and told us he was heading to the Sox-Cubs series to make a bundle. (Not surprisingly, he didn’t want to talk to us on camera).

Often, these guys operate in broad daylight. We presume they work in teams, too. There are guys working far away from the stadiums, wearing signs that say “I need tickets.” They buy their tickets from everyday fans who might have an extra to burn. These tickets, we assume, are then passed to the guys working the interior and sold at a higher price.

It’s all a game of margins.

At some of the ballparks we’ve seen these guys wearing walkie-talkies, too. Teamwork isn’t limited to the playing field. 

While I was watching Daren get busted, the cops asked — between obscenities — who he was working with. Actually they demanded it, and punctuated the point with several F-bombs. They wanted to know who else was involved in this “racket.” 

Thankfully Daren didn’t mention me, or divulge that we were working in this capacity as journalists, or point out that I was standing across the street filming this encounter. I was fairly close to the action and I knew I was within my legal right to film this bust. But I’m not so foolish to think that lawmen don’t sometimes make mistakes, or unwittingly infringe upon one of our key rights they are sworn to protect. Back in my newspaper days, a traffic cop once tried to take my camera and film at the scene of an accident. Two years later a firefighter nearly threw me to the ground after he gave me an ORDER! — that I IGNORED! — to stop taking pictures of his buddy climbing a ladder to a burning building.

So as the obscenities began flying and I saw the sweat beading on Daren’s forehead, I put my camera down to my waist but kept rolling. I also pulled off my headphones and began talking to a guy with a clipboard who was asking for donations. I’ve never paid so much attention to one of these guys in my life.

I even agreed to give him some money if he would just keep talking.

I wasn’t even entirely sure Daren was being busted until the swearing started. Apparently these guys were pissed of they had drawn the short straw and missed out on the stop sign sting. 

If ticket scalping is against the law, and Daren broke it, then I guess there’s really nothing we can complain about. But I still don’t understand why they had to bring up Jesus Christ, the F-bomb and threaten Daren with jail time. Because, when you put all the posturing aside, busting people for selling tickets can be summed up in one word. 

Charade.

A day later in Cleveland, a scalper offered us tickets and a parking pass not 10 feet away from a uniformed officer. We were still in our Jeep, and as I hung a 10 dollar bill out the window for the parking pass the scalper said, “I can’t take that. You have to get out and walk over here or that cop will arrest me.”

If that’s the difference between this guy making $1,000 in two hours and Daren losing $500 in 5 minutes, then this is a joke. 

I can think of more productive tasks cops can perform on the taxpayers’ dime. The real scalpers in Chicago obviously know their way around the system, just like the ticket broker from Milwaukee or the dude in Cleveland who got away with an illegal transaction just because I stepped out of my Jeep. 

If the Chicago police really want to take a bite out of price gouging, I can suggest the perfect place to start: 

How about those jerks INSIDE the stadium selling beer for $8.50?

(There’s more on this and our other adventures at BaseCrawl.com.)