Saturday, March 13, 2010

Dodge THIS, You Bastards

Suppose you wake up one morning and, as always, you head to the kitchen and pour yourself a heaping bowl of Cap'n Crunch cereal.  When you open your refrigerator, much to your chagrin, you realize that one of your roommates has polished off the last of the milk.  To remedy the situation, you get in your car and drive to the local Piggly Wiggly, grab a half-gallon of lowfat and take it to the express lane.  Instead of scanning the carton, though, the checker looks at you and says, "I'm sorry, I can't sell you this milk."

"Excuse me?" you say, in complete and utter befuddlement.

"You can't buy this milk as an individual item," says the checker with a smug little smirk on her face, "it's our new policy.  Lots of people are buying milk these days, so in order to get this half-gallon, you'll also have to buy a can of Spam, two boxes of Twinkies, a pack of Juicy Fruit gum, a twelve-pack of Diet Dr. Pepper, and three pounds of ground beef."

You politely tell the checker what she can do with the half gallon of milk, and storm out of the Piggly Wiggly more frustrated than a three-legged dog with jock itch.

Or how about this?  It's June, and you've decided to take your family on a nice vacation to Orlando, Florida to spend a joyous week throwing away your hard-earned money at the Disney World Resorts.  The wife is excited, your kids have nominated you for Awesomely Cool Dad of the Century, and you're feeling pretty damn good about life as we know it.  But when you visit your local travel agent to purchase your plane tickets, you receive a dastardly surprise.  It seems that the airlines are unwilling to sell you plane tickets to Orlando.  That is, unless you also book flights to Cleveland, Boise, Austin, Boston, and Flint.

"I'm sorry," explains the travel agent, "but since Orlando is such a popular tourist destination, we've decided that in order to purchase these tickets, you have to book additional flights as well.  Have a nice day!"

Pretty ridiculous scenarios, right?  You're probably asking yourself, "Okay, what's his point?  Grocery stores don't make anyone buy Spam, and airlines certainly aren't going to force anyone to fly to Cleveland.  What's going on here, really?"

Well, let me tell you what in the name of Tommy Friggin' Lasorda is going on here, really.

This season, as part of Major League Baseball's Interleague schedule, my beloved New York Yankees will be flying out here to Los Angeles to spend a relaxing weekend beating the crap out of the Dodgers.  Knowing this, last Christmas my kids bought me four Dodger Stadium ticket vouchers, coupons that can be exchanged for actual tickets once they go on sale.  The kids' intent, of course, was for me to use these vouchers to get tickets for one of the Yankee games.

So the tickets go on sale, and I log on to Dodgers.com to purchase four seats at the Dodgers-Yankees game on June 25.  Do you know what I found out?  If you guessed "the Dodgers have blacked out that entire weekend so these tickets may not be purchased with ticket vouchers," you are correct.  Isn't that awesome?

But wait.  The fun is just beginning.

Not to be thwarted quite so easily, I decide to simply buy tickets to one of the Yankee games, and use the vouchers for a game later in the season.  Baseball is baseball, so we'll get tickets to, say, a Dodgers-Cubs game and root for the Dodgers to get their asses beat.  In the meantime, I'll shell out a few bucks to see the Yankees.

I notice that there's a special banner on the Dodgers website, advertising the series with the Yankees.  The slogan is "L.A. vs. N.Y.  Watch the Dodgers Receive a Horsehide Enema" or something like that.  I click on the banner, figuring that this will take me to the page where I can buy tickets.  But that is not the case at all.  It takes me to a page with the following message:

THE ONLY WAY TO GET TICKETS FOR THE YANKEES SERIES IS TO BUY A 28, 21, or 14-GAME DODGERS MINI-PLAN

Yeah, that's right, if I want to see the Yankees, I have to buy tickets for at least thirteen other Dodgers games, with the lowest possible option being $126 per mini-plan. For that price, you get seats that are located in El Segundo which, for those of you unfamiliar with So Cal geography, is pretty Goddamn far from Dodger Stadium.

Knowing me, I'll probably end up biting the bullet and become the Dodgers' little bitch, either buying tickets at a ridiculously marked up scalper's rate or getting a mini-plan and selling off the non-Yankee games.

Anyone interested in two seats in El Segundo for the Dodgers and Pirates?


j

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25 comments:

Jeanne Estridge said...

Do you have to bend over while you're making the transaction?

Unknown said...

Wow, that stinks! I've never heard of such a thing.

Anonymous said...

MLB has become such a bunch of whiny whores I'm surprised anyone goes to any of their games. In general, all the professional sports leagues have gotten absolutely ridiculous with blackouts, rules, copyrights, trademarks, who can blog about a game or even take pictures, on and on. Then, the price of a seat has you wondering if you've accidentally logged onto British Air and are reserving a one-way last-minute seat on one of the transatlantic Concordes. It'll be a cold day in hell before I ever encourage any of them to continue on by buying a seat at a live game.

Anonymous said...

Yowza! That was DASTARDLY indeed!

B.S. I love the word dastardly, I use it as much as possible, so I was thrilled to see it here today.

corticoWhat said...

Bwahahaha! How ironic that the Dodgers found a creative way to stick it to all you transplanted Yankee fans. Blame it on Reggie.

Homemaker Man said...

S'what you get for being a Yankees fan. Its like complaining "Satan is my favorite deity . . . whaddya mean I have to go to hell to see him

ReformingGeek said...

Gee, you'd think it was all about the money or something.

;-)

Dastardly indeed.

screwdestiny said...

That's effing ridiculous!

Judge Fudge said...

If the Dodgers don't watch it, people are going to stop going to their games....Oh, wait.

Heff said...

What a SCREWJOB !

Fragrant Liar said...

As they say, you didn't even get kissed first.

Michelle H. said...

Anyone interested in two seats in El Segundo for the Dodgers and Pirates?

Are you kidding me? I would rather have the horsehide enema!

Er, wait. That sounded bad and won't help you sell the tickets. Let me change that...

Why, certainly! I would love to see the Pirates play the Dodgers. Being a southwestern Pennsylvania girl who used to go to the Pirate games back when they were WINNING, and not now where they've gone through an 18-YEAR LOSING STREAK, I would love to see what kind of extravagant catastrophe they'll have playing the Dodgers.

Eh, whatever. Pass me the enema. It will be more entertaining.

Mike said...

Just go to the stadium the day of the game. It sounds like even the Yankees couldn't fill the place up.

Grumpy, M.D. said...

I'd just go the day of the game and buy from scalpers. then let them fuck themselves for the other 81 home games.

Bobby Allan said...

You got a problem with flying to Cleveland, buddy boy??

IT (aka Ivan Toblog) said...

I have a t-shirt, somewhere, still in its wrapper, that has the words F_ _ _ the Dodgers. If I can find it, you may have it.

nipsy said...

So let me get this straight...they not only rape you @ $8 for a tiny beer, $5 for a damn hot dog, $35 for parking, and about $125 for everything else you buy there, they now want to tell you just how many games you have to go to simply for one game??

Screw that..

Happy Vegemite said...

From the sounds of it I reckon it'd be cheaper to fly to NY to take in a Yankees/Dodgers game or, better yet, Yankees vs a damn good team instead.

Jeff Tompkins said...

This has been going on for a while in college football, mostly as a step between season ticket holders and, well, no ticket holders. They'll combine a really hot ticket with tickets to three or four other home games that they know will not sell out. End result: scalpers LOVE it.

Nooter said...

i wanna be a pirate

Suldog said...

That just plain sucks, my man. Of course, you're getting pretty much what you deserve for being a Yankees fan, but still. I say go through a ticket agency or a scalper, and screw the Dodgers. Good luck.

Buggys said...

This totally sucks. I don't think I could stand to give them any of my hard earned $. Better you should fly to NY and see a game here, yeah, since your money is no object for me!

Unknown said...

oh for the love of pete, that is ridiculous.

I love the cross town classics here, but I will never go with fans from the "other" team again.

go white sox.

Julie Dunlap said...

Royals would never pull that, but they probably should. I say buy them, sell all you can, give away the rest as early Christmas presents, and enjoy the game!!

Rothase said...

Damn. It's easier to get Cards-Cubs tickets than that, and those games always sell out! And you can take the train for $5 so you don't have to pay to park. But the $5 hotdog is still pretty annoying.
GO CARDS!

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