Tracker Scalp 1997

Well here comes old crotchety Alan again with the good old days.

Back in the late sixties, and early seventies, I went to many rock concerts where I was able to witness groups like The Who, Led Zeppelin, Jimmy Hendrix, and The Doors. The difference between then and now was that the most I ever paid to see these groups, was eight dollars. The concert that I paid the astronomical amount of eight dollars for was the Rolling Stones, and the seats I got were fifty feet away from Mick Jagger. What's more, I bought those seats a couple of days after they went on sale. Flash forward twenty eight years, to 1997, the last time I saw the Rolling Stones in Miami. For the privilege of sitting as far up in the Orange Bowl as is humanly possible without using supplemental oxygen, and seeing what appeared to be Mick Jagger, the size of an ant, cavorting around on the stage a football field away, I paid seventy five dollars. Is it that there are just more people trying to see these events, or is it the ticket scalpers that have driven the price up?

I have done my part in the past to help encourage the scalpers. Back in 1997, when my older brother called and asked if I wanted to go to the seventh game of the World Series in Miami, I quickly said yes. The only snag was, we didn't have tickets. So on game night I slowly cruised down the dimly lit streets around Joe Robbe Stadium in my little convertible, while my brother asked the various ne'er-do-wells hanging around if they had any tickets. When one guy finally said yes, we stopped. "Four hundred dollars", the guy said. Almost at the same time that I replied "No, too much!", my brother pulled out a wad of cash the size of a Chicago soft ball, and said "Okay!". This was not a good neighborhood, and when I saw my brother pull out that cash I put the car in reverse, and started pulling away. The guy with the tickets ran after the car, waving frantically and yelled "Okay, okay, two hundred!". I slammed on the brakes, and we got two tickets to the right field stands, where we got to see the Florida Marlins win their first World Series. When I think back about it, we didn't know if the tickets were authentic, we were two white guys cruising around a neighborhood where we, shall we say, stood out, and my brother was waving around a huge wad of cash. I guess that's what's called dumb luck.