Sunday, April 01, 2007 |
"Please God, Another Couple Of Weeks And I'll Make It" — The End Of Opening Day Streaks
In 2003, the Reds moved to a ballpark with room for 10,000 fewer fans. Single-game tickets to Opening Day grew scarce, he says, as the Reds have begun reserving many of the seats for buyers of pricey multigame packages. So Mr. Hoffmann started camping out in mid-winter ticket lines, scouring eBay for seats and enlisting his wife to work multiple computers and phones the moment tickets came available.Nettie Berkson continues to show up for opening day for the Dodgers, her 50th consecutive season:...
This year, for example, the Los Angeles Dodgers offered about 14,000 individual tickets for its first home game, down from 16,500 last year, because it had included more of its Opening Day tickets in multiple-ticket plans. The New York Mets offered about 6,000 individual tickets for this year's game, about half of last year's count. The Milwaukee Brewers sold out of the 1,000 or so individual tickets it offered for its first game this year, down from the 4,000 it offered last year. The team had fewer individual tickets in part, it says, because it doubled its inventory of nine-game ticket plans that include Opening Day. (This year the Brewers sold out all 10,000 of the packages, with prices from $117 to $297.)
She started watching the team with her late husband in 1958, after the franchise moved from Brooklyn, and now attends with children, grandchildren and great-grandchildren.Just look out for those parking Nazis, and make sure you don't need to park in the handicap stalls, okay?"Please God, another couple of weeks and I'll make it," Mrs. Berkson said in late March.
...
Mrs. Berkson started watching the Dodgers in 1958, and bought season tickets shortly after. In 1991, baseball became more than a favored pastime: One of Mrs. Berkson's grandsons, Glen Greenberg, was diagnosed with leukemia. He was 6 years old. He submitted to a rigorous course of chemotherapy and was in and out of the hospital for a year. "I was a kid," Mr. Greenberg says. "All I wanted to do was go out and play."
Mrs. Berkson mentioned her grandson's plight to members of her card-game group, which included a relative of Jim Gott, a relief pitcher for the Dodgers. Mr. Gott began making regular visits to the hospital, and a friendship developed between the young cancer patient and professional athlete. "When I found a link to baseball, it was an easy escape -- the perfect removal from reality," says Mr. Greenberg, now 22. He has attended 16 Opening Day games. He and the Gott family remain close.
On April 9, Mr. Greenberg plans to escort his grandmother to her 50th straight Dodgers Opening Day. Also joining them will be representatives of the next Berkson generation, including Maddox, 4, who will be attending his fourth Dodgers home opener, and Briggs, who will be hitting his second straight game. Briggs turns 2 in May.
Labels: dodgers
: 4/02/2007 07:09:00 AM
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