Tampa Bay baseball fans thought they were getting a real treat when it was announced that the Boston Red Sox-Chicago Cubs regular season game would be moved to Tropicana Field for a Sunday matinee because of a “nor’easter” storm lashing Boston and surrounding states.
It was the last game of the regular season for both teams. The contest itself was meaningless. Both teams were already in the playoffs. Little was at stake. It would be played at the dreadful Trop.
But hey, Red Sox-Cubs!
Being a Red Sox fan is a cult-like state of being, and devotees are willing to pay any price to sit in Fenway Park’s uncomfortable, obstructed view seats to watch their beloved Sawx. Cubs followers, no less enthusiastic, are known to populate anyplace their boys go as long as there’s plenty of Old Style beer to swill along with a chance to stack cups and throw opponents’ baseballs back onto the field after home runs.
The chance to see these two teams play in our own backyard on a Sunday afternoon was too much to pass up. The Trop, the stadium that keeps the Chicago White Sox’s lyrically named Rate Field from being listed as the worst in baseball, is no baseball Valhalla. But unlike Fenway at least the Trop’s seats have cupholders for your $12 beer. (No Old Style, though.)
No matter. The Tampa Bay Rays were out of town and were themselves already locked into a playoff spot, the Buccaneers football team is painful to watch (who cares about NFL football anyway?), and two famous, legacy Major League Baseball teams were set to take the field less than an hour away from most places in the area.
The Red Sox were technically the home team, which meant “Sweet Caroline” would ring through the Trop’s support beams in the middle of the eighth. No Red Sox fan wants to miss that.
The assumption in some quarters locally was that, given the hastily arranged event, the no-stakes nature of the contest and the awful venue, tickets would be affordable even to the casual curiosity seekers who had no dog in the hunt but simply like Major League baseball.
How sweetly naive.
How 1990s.
How very silly.
The cost of tickets for the inconsequential match started at about $130 Saturday afternoon and rose steadily as evening arrived, with cheap seats weighing in at about $170. Decent seats? A few perches represented the cost of the coming week’s groceries or even more, with some reaching $1,100.
For a game bereft of meaning.
It’s easy to blame MLB for this ticket pricing scam, but that would mean ignoring the role of those loathsome leeches not only on sports but on the entire entertainment industry, the ticket brokers. Face value tickets were available early, but they were quickly scooped up by brokers like a routine grounder to shortstop and thrown back at fans for the typical usury charged by these hyenas.
There was a time, it seems like not too long ago, when a parent of two children could sit in the $5 left field bleachers at Milwaukee County Stadium, buy Dippin’ Dots, hot dogs and soda for the kids and spend $30 or so.
That’s nostalgia.
MLB has focused itself on the “fan experience,” but it is pricing itself into stratospheric levels where many fans cannot — or will not — spend good money on such an encounter.
Still, MLB claims attendance rose for the fourth season in a row, with about 71 million people showing up in the 2026 season. (It must be because of the larger bases and the elimination of the shift — no doubt big selling points for the casual fan.) Indeed, more than 20,000 paid the exorbitant prices to witness the inconsequential Red Sox-Cubs tilt at the Trop.
But it gets worse. Now that we’ve moved into the postseason, ticket prices have rocketed through the Trop’s fiberglass yarn roof. One of the vulpine ticket brokers was charging $180 — including fees — for standing room for Game One of the Rays-New York Yankees series, while other seating locales go for more than $300.
In Milwaukee, the smallest market in baseball, a place where fans are thrifty when sober, it will cost $122 for the privilege of standing for nine innings — no seat for you, cheapskate. No cup holder, either — in Game One of the Milwaukee Brewers-San Diego Padres playoff series. Milwaukee fans are intensely loyal, and the team drew just under 2.8 million fans — an average of more than 34,000 each game.
The Rays attracted 1.4 million, or about 17,400 a game.
But where is the line? When do MLB fans say enough is enough?
Impending labor strife that is likely to mean a player lockout in 2027, and possibly the loss of dozens of regular season games.
Resolution of the owners-players battle will come at some point because too much money is at stake. But whatever agreement is reached, it’s not going to lower the cost of attending a game.
Whatever happens in MLB, the minor leagues will play a full season in 2027. The Clearwater Threshers open their 2027 season on April 2 against the Tampa Tarpons. The Dunedin Blue Jays’ home opener at TD Ballpark is April 6 against the Bradenton Marauders.
Minor league baseball is competitive, spirited and much less expensive than the majors. Tickets in Dunedin start at $8 and parking is free. Although seating is assigned, fans can usually sit where they like. Clearwater, where ushers militantly enforce seating, charges $11 for premium box seats and $7 everywhere else. Parking is $5.
If MLB delays its season start in 2027, take in a minor league game.
It won’t cause you to skip a car payment to pay for tickets, and, well, it’s baseball.