The Great Fenway Park Dumpster Dive
Sunday, December 13, 2009 – Fenway Park
Every year I register for Christmas at Fenway so I can have a shot at buying 4-game Sox Pax and individual game tickets in person, but so far, I’ve always been rejected. The last two years the Red Sox have held The Great Fenway Park Yard Sale the following day, and I’ve gotten rejected for that, too. Christmas at Fenway is my preference out of the two, because if I lose out on that I get stuck in the dreaded Virtual Waiting Room for hours, which some years has meant that the tickets I wanted were gone by the time I got in. But the Yard Sale sounded cool, too, because they’re selling off Fenway Park bricks and other memorabilia.
Last year, even though I lost out on both opportunities, I got a “second chance” invitation to the Yard Sale for the following Monday for people who had been rejected originally. Unfortunately, by the time I got home from work and saw the email, it was too late. For a whole year, it bugged me that I’d missed out on my chance for a real live (so to speak) Fenway Park brick.
This year I registered again, and got my “un-vitations” telling me I had lost again. Saturday I braved the Virtual Waiting Room, and was fortunate to get through and get the games I wanted, which makes up for the other years when I spent 8 hours staring at the screen only to get shut out. This year I had even prepared for a potential 2nd chance at the Yard Sale by taking Monday off from work just in case.
On Sunday afternoon I was getting ready to go to my friends’ house for my 6-year-old godson’s birthday party, when I got an email saying I could go to the Yard Sale this afternoon. So I naturally jumped in the car and headed straight for Boston, calling my friend to let her know I couldn’t come to the party. (When I do see the kids, they’ll be getting some of the stuff I snagged today.)
It was easy to find a free parking spot on Van Ness St. The Yard Sale was inside Gate E. For $20 we could get a brick, a t-shirt, and all the other stuff we could fit in a basket. I browsed through the brick pile for a while (I don’t think I put that much thought into produce selection at the grocery store) before finally finding the perfect one. The t-shirt says MLB.com on the front and Redsox.com on the back, which isn’t that exciting but isn’t bad either. There were tons of Media Guides from this year and last year, as well as Media Guides for the other teams. I buy the Media Guide myself every year, so I already had one, but I picked up some to share with my parents and friends. I also took a copy of the commemorative Jim Rice issue of Red Sox Magazine from this summer and a 2008 ALCS program.
My very own Fenway Park brick!
They also had squeezy stress balls with the Red Sox logo (that ought to come in handy!) and my second-favorite item after the brick – the commemorative baseballs given out on the night of the 500th consecutive sellout. I had gone to sellouts #499 and 501 last year, but missed out on the night in between where they had all kinds of fan appreciation giveaways. Instead I went the next night, where all I got for my trouble was a 2½-hour rain delay. (Tallying it up now, I realize I went to 177 of those 500 games!) So it was nice to get one of the baseballs, plus a couple extras to share.
That’s all that was there when I went, though I suspect the selection might have been better earlier in the day for the people who won the original drawing. There was also a room where we could purchase other items like game-worn jerseys, bats, and autographed memorabilia, but the prices were too high for my taste. I thought the signage might be cool, but they were all temporary signs that had been used for concerts at Fenway. I didn’t see any decent game-related signs like I hoped to find. But I was happy with my brick, so it was worth the trip in to Boston.
