As a founding member of the Jorge Mateo fan club, I was very excited when the Athletics home opener against the Orioles (Mateo’s team) coincided with my trip to the bay area.
Blessed, as I am with two daughters, I am also cursed by their indecision and procrastination, so it was not until the morning of the game did I know who was coming with me and how many tickets I needed to purchase.
I’m going out on a limb here and suggesting it will not be a sell-out. I checked on SeatGeek or StubHub, and there were plenty of seats available in all areas of the ground and at all price levels.
My girls are more for the atmosphere than the potentially-exhilarating matchup between Spenser Watkins, the Orioles starter, and Christian Bethancourt, the Athletics’ designated hitter. May I remind you that this is actual MLB – the highest level of the game – not some mediocre matchup from the minor leagues.
Anyway, our plan was for four modestly-priced tickets at $33 each.
Seat Geek’s website was easy to navigate, but I needed to create an account to purchase. No problem, you would have thought, but an SMS authorisation code was required, and despite having a flashy dual-sim (one US, one UK) phone, no code materialised.
StubHub drove me to despair. The UK version would only show UK events, and the US version would not let me create an account without a US postal address.
Ticketmaster was my third option – I use Ticketmaster all the time in the UK – and I got as far as inputting my credit card details, but it would not accept my payment as I did not have a US postcode.
Arghh.
Option four was to contact my buddy, David Greenman (Hollywood’s fantasy baseball guru), who kindly purchased the tickets on my behalf. An email duly arrived with a link to access tickets.
Unfortunately, I needed the MLB Ballpark app. Doubly-unfortunately, the App store refused to download it as I did not have an account with the US version of the App Store. This was getting frustrating.
I formulated a workaround, but that soon hit a brick wall when it claimed that I needed to login to the MLB account tied to David Greenman. After another workaround (and way too much wasted time), I am finally the proud possessor of four Baltimore Orioles vs. Oakland Athletics tickets.
I have told my daughters that one of these two might get to the World Series. Perhaps my boldest ever prediction.
Featured image photo of Christian Bethancourt by Chris Bernacchi/Diamond Images via Getty Images
Gav is one of the ever-growing writing team at Bat Flips & Nerds. You can follow him on Twitter @GavTramps, or better still, why not submit an article yourself? Hit the “write for us” link.