|
Seeking a cure for playoff fever
Posted: Thursday May 09, 2002 3:01 PM
I went to a Celtics playoff game a week ago as a fan. I don't go to many sporting events as a fan because, hey, that's my job, watching sports for a living. Why paint your own house when you paint houses all week for everybody else? But my wife wanted to go and I bought two seats from Ticketmaster, 170 bucks total after the service fee.
I sat behind some lout in a Bill Russell game jersey who had decided that for the $170 he spent for his wife and himself they should be allowed to drink as much beer as humanly possible. They had piled up nine 16-ounce cups, five bucks a cup, by the end of the first quarter. He spent most of his time dancing, trying to get the in-stadium camera crew to put his sodden face on the megaboard.
The couple behind us were corporate types. Someone else had paid their $170. The woman asked the man which of the Celtics players was Shaq. The man spent most of the game hitting me on the back of the head with a green-and-white pom pom that some radio station had given to each spectator.
I spent three hours, total, in these seats in this arena named after a bank, ate and drank a little, cheered when the megaboard told me to cheer, did what I could to improve the dispositions of the tall, athletic millionaires running up and down the parquet floor in front of me. It wasn't a bad time, but the night, total, probably cost around $230.
I suppose playoff fever is not the worst disease to catch these days. The treatments, though, can be quite expensive.
Leigh Montville's commentaries appear regularly on CNN/Sports Illustrated.
|
