Chez Chesler

Brett Arends (Boston Herald, December 9) suggests that Fenway Park move from paper to electronic tickets to defeat scalpers. He suggests that the fact that people are buying tickets to resell (at a profit -- scalping) contributes to "real fans" not being able to get tickets. It’s the only way to cut out the scalpers, free up season tickets, and let the ordinary fans get back into their ballpark. He concludes that his scheme would mean a much better chance they’d be bought by people who actually want to see the game. To whom does he think the scalpers are selling the tickets? Who does he think is occupying every seat at every game (post-season excluded)? John Henry, to his credit, has dismissed any suggestion that the Sox should try to pocket that $100 million themselves by auctioning tickets to the highest bidder. He knows that would price many fans out of the market. No matter how they slice it, there are only 3 million seats in a season (36,200 seating capacity time 81 home games is 2,932,200.) Some fans are getting seats for less than they'd be willing to pay. Some fans don't go to the games because the price is too high. No matter the price the Red Sox sells them to the public, and no matter the final markup price, it's going to be that way. What better way to judge how much a seat is worth to a fan than how much he's willing to pay, how much he's willing to give up for that seat?