Smells Like the Year
It’s Fever Pitch Re-enactment Day!
The final scene of the Fever Pitch movie, where Drew Barrymore runs across the field, was filmed after a game I went to in 2004. (Click the picture for the details of the game.)
Today was that highly-anticipated day when my Tenth Man Plan tickets arrived. It’s always been so stressful! First of all, I live in an apartment building. The front door of the building, where the buzzers are, leads to the street. But I always go in the back door, where the parking lot is. So if a package delivery attempt is made and they leave a sticky-note on the front door, I’ll never think to look for it unless one of my neighbors brings it up and sticks it on my door. That’s how I almost didn’t get my tickets one year.
The first year, one of my neighbors must have signed for it and slid the envelope under my door. The second year, I never saw the delivery note saying that they had left it in the apartment office. When I first moved here, the apartment office didn’t hold packages for residents, so I never thought to look there. I called the Red Sox and they said it had been signed for by some undecipherable name a week ago, and I thought one of my neighbors had stolen it. The Red Sox first told me they’d resend them, c/o one of my friends who’s home during the day. But when I called back a few days later to track that package, and they told me they weren’t resending them until I had a police report saying they were stolen. Luckily I finally found them in the apartment office, but the whole process had freaked me out ever since.
The last few years the Red Sox have been emailing us the tracking info, so I know when they’re coming and where I can pick them up. In the past they’ve used FedEx or DHL, both of which are 20 miles away from me. This year, happily, they came via USPS, which means I only had to go as far as my town’s post office. Easy!
Every year when I rip open the envelope, I re-enact my favorite scene from Fever Pitch. OK, I skip the running-down-the-street-in-my-underwear-and-hugging-the-delivery-guy part, but I mean the part where Jimmy Fallon opens the package and hands the sheet of tickets out to his friends, and they say:
“A new season.”
“A clean slate.”
[sniffs] “Yup, this smells like the year.”
(Watch the clip at IMDb.) The tickets really do come in sheets like that (and I’m always nervous as I separate them that I’ll rip them the wrong way). But I checked out the new batch, and I can assure you… this smells like the year!
Now that all my tickets are in hand, all that’s left is to wait for Opening Day!
