"suits" at games

[Mark Piotrowski <markp@xxxxxxxxxxxxxxxxx>]

He has a point.  When I was at the phone company, they had Magic 
tickets as
a "prize" for an internal promotion.  Several people went out of their 
way
to win them.  I didn't bother.  When asked "why", I said because I 
didn't
especially like seeing the Denver Nuggets get stomped on unless it was 
the
Celtics doing the stomping.  They didn't have any clue as to the 
relative
quality--or lack thereof--of the teams playing that night.

But there's a very high number of "corporate tickets" reserved at 
various
events these days.  Often, the company gets them as part of a PR 
campaign,
("Company X in partnership with Team Y for the good of the community"), 
or
as a means to entertain visitors, or simply as a tax write off for
"entertainment/business" expenses.

snoop wrote:
> The Celtics have a reputation as the team of the Working Joe, yet more 
> and
> more, I also see suited people in the stands.  Now, some of that may 
> simply
> be people going straight from work with no time to change.  But even in
> Boston, someone's trying to "upscale" the place--particularly 
> upscaling the
> ticket prices.

This was both a blessing and a curse for me when I lived in Boston (c. 
1997-8 -- the Brett Szabo Era).  On the one hand it was really great 
b/c as often as not the corporate tix would go unused -- meaning folks 
like me could buy $10 tickets and sit in (then) $80 seats.  More than 
once I'd be sitting there an look over at the guy next to me and we'd 
say "where are your seats" and each point to a different section of the 
rafters.  I'm guessing this happens less now that the Celtics are 
winning again and most of thes folks woudl be considered fair-weather 
fans at best.

On the other hand it was pretty depressing.  The "suits" would come in 
1/2 way through the 2nd quarter and leave just before the 4th -- often 
regardless of how good a game it was.  It always pissed me off that 
rabid fans like me (who couldn't afford $80 tix each game) would have 
to sit way up in the nosebleed, while these fair-weather fans could 
afford the good seats, and had no problem coming late and leaving 
early.  (the best Nike commericial I ever saw was one of those ones 
iwth KG and Payton where they were some sort of detective squad or 
something ridiculous.  But they made it so kids and real fans got the 
good seats, whiel the "suits" had to sit in the rafters.)  The result 
was a usually dead crowd -- which needed to be egged on by stupid 
promotions and people jumping around like nuts.

I also was always irritated -- almost to the point of wanting to scream 
-- when one of these johnny-come-latelys would say (either from sheer 
ignorance or attempted irony) "where's Larry Bird?"  I'm not kidding, 
some of these folks actually didn't realize that LB wasn't playing 
anymore.  Idiots.

(the other) mark